USC RB Bryan Jackson becomes first Trojan to enter transfer portal

With USC's 2025 regular season now in the books, transfer portal season is officially upon us. While the Trojans still have a bowl game to play this year, the unfortunate reality of the modern era of college football is that their roster for that game will likely look quite different than it did in the regular season, as numerous players hit the portal in search of better opportunities at other schools.

On Monday, USC suffered its first portal loss of the cycle in running back Bryan Jackson. In two years in Cardinal and Gold, Jackson carried the ball 72 times for 311 yards and five touchdowns.

Jackson's departure is not all that stunning due to the fact that the Trojans have an overcrowded running back room right now. Redshirt freshman walk-on King Miller emerged as a legitimate star down the stretch run, and USC is hoping that Waymond Jordan—who led the backfield during the first half of the season—will return next year from an ankle injury that he suffered in the Michigan game.

Perhaps Jackson's most memorable moment at USC came in the aforementioned Michigan game, when both Jordan and fellow running back Eli Sanders went down with injuries. While the Trojans had listed Jackson as "Out" on their pregame injury report as a precautionary measure, the injuries forced them to bring him in anyway, and he scored a fourth quarter touchdown that put the game out of reach. USC was later fined $5,000 by the Big Ten for the move.

The NCAA transfer portal will officially be open from January 2-16. However, due to restrictions caused by the academic calendar and the reality that pretty much everyone tampers nowadays, expect plenty of players to announce their intentions to enter the portal before then so that they can begin to look towards finding their new schools.

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: USC football running back Bryan Jackson enters transfer portal