Tag Archives: north-carolina

04.20.25
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The flip side of the portal: Getting a P4 recruit

For a school like Temple, there are always two sides to the transfer portal.

One side, the bad one, is recruiting and developing talent for another team to steal.

The good side of this coin–often ignored–is that the transfer portal opens the Owls to acquire football talent they might not otherwise have a chance to get out of high school.

Take Cedar Creek’s Jo Jo Bermudez for instance. Temple has expressed an interest in him and he has expressed an interest in Temple.

It’s a trade that would benefit both since the Owls seem thin at wide receiver and Bermudez has a good chance of earning a starting job.

He set a South Jersey receiving record for yardage with 1,992 in his senior year of high school. His recruiting was down to the Big 10 (Rutgers) and the Big 12 (Cincinnati) and ultimately chose the Bearcats. While he didn’t play for the Bearcats, he transferred to Delaware and became their best wide receiver and caught a touchdown pass against Villanova in November.

Temple used to win recruiting battles with P4 schools but that was a long time ago and in a different era of college football. Al Golden’s first recruit was to beat out Boston College and Rutgers for the services of Kee-Ayre Griffin, who became both a starting running back and a starting quarterback for Golden. Matt Rhule beat out LSU and Rutgers for the services of Anthony Russo. Golden also stole Adrian Robinson from Pitt, among others.

Temple really hasn’t gotten that type of guy since Rhule left, although the transfer portal has sent players from Texas A&M, Florida, Penn State and other places to Temple. Most of them were backups who never made an impact at Temple but a player like Diwan Black was an exception last year.

Maybe Bermudez could fit into that category this year.

Now, if the Owls are able to land Bermudez, they would upgrade the talent in the room and competition only makes the team better.

Kajiya Hollawayne, Xavier Irvin and Tyler Stewart were running with the first team in the spring and that’s a little surprising because John Adams and Antonio Jones made the most big plays in actual games last year.

Right now, my starters are Adams and Jones at wide receiver and Ryder Kusch at tight end but with most teams playing three receivers, there is plenty of room for Bermudez to make an impact.

It’s the flip side of the transfer portal coin and could bring in a talent that the Owls would have had little chance of landing coming out of high school.