Editor's note: Steve Doerschuk spent months researching quarterbacks. The result is three waves of a series, "Year of the Quarterback." The first wave revolves around tremendous high school quarterbacks fighting to find the field in college. This is the seventh article in the first wave.
A time machine meets the transfer portal.
Mid-American Conference quarterback history scrambles beyond recognition.
Journey two decades back. Behold. Ben Roethlisberger , Charlie Frye , Josh Cribbs , Josh Harris and Bruce Gradkowski were the quaterbacks of the Miami RedHawks, Akron Zips, Kent State Golden Flashes, Bowling Green Falcons and Toledo Rockets.
They spent long MAC careers in one place. Their teams signed them out of high school, played them early, watched them grow, and saw them off to the NFL.
They left college with a combined 45,775 passing yards and 333 touchdown passes.
Perhaps it was Julian Edelman who broke the tend. Before he started for three years at Kent State on the heels of the Cribbs era, he transferred in from the College of San Mateo (California).
Time has flown. Everybody transfers, it seems now.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary spells out the definition of what fits current MAC quarterbacking:
"A powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius, or something resembling such a whirlpool in turbulence or confusion."
The word is maelstrom. For NCAA football purposes, it is two words: transfer portal.
There was no portal when the above-named group gave the MAC the best cluster of quarterbacks in its history. Among the six Ohio members, only Ohio University lacked a longtime star then.
Even the Bobcats wound up with "a name" at the position.
Ryan Hawk, whose younger brother A.J. became an All-American linebacker at Ohio State, spent two years at Miami. Stuck behind Roethlisberger, he transferred to Ohio, sat out the 2002 season under the rules of he day.
He shared the job with Fred Ray and Austen Everson in 2003, when the Bobcats went 2-10, losing back to back-to-back-back to Cribbs, Frye and Roethlisberger.
Roethlisberger graduated from Findlay High School in the spring of 2001. Three months later, he started Miami's 2001 opener against the Michigan Wolverines.
Five weeks after that, Roethlisberger won a 30-27 duel against Frye, an Akron freshman from Willard High School.
The Sept. 11 attacks unfolded four days before Miami was to face Kent State. When the postponed game came off on Nov. 24, Cribbs, a freshman from Washington, D.C., led the Golden Flashes to a 24-20 victory over Roethlisberger's RedHawks.
They met again and again. They became campus icons.
In the same era, Harris grew at Bowling Green under head coach Urban Meyer . In 2003, after Meyer left for Utah, Harris was a senior on an 11-3 team. The losses were 24-17 to Ohio State and twice to Roethlisberger's RedHawks, including in the MAC championship game.
All those MAC stars are gone, and the sky is portal gray. The conference is clouded under a world where quarterbacks transfer out and in, on and on, leaving something of a quarterbacks anonymous.
College Football Hall of Fame coach Larry Kehres tries to wrap his head around it. His former Mount Union player, Jason Candle, is Toledo's head coach. His son, Vince Kehres, is the Rockets' defensive coordinator.
"What's the Mid-American Conference going to be? A feeder league?" he said.
It isn't that dire, yet, although, to Kehres' point, Kurtis Rourke, Ohio's starting quarterback last year, stands to be Indiana's starter this year, and DeQuan Finn, Toledo's 2023 starter, is the new QB1 at Baylor.
It's getting quite convoluted.
Consider the story of 2023 Kent State starter Michael Alaimo.
Coming out out of high school in Montvale, New Jersey, Alaimo had size, a big arm, and a No. 3 ESPN ranking among pocket passers for the USA's 2020 recruiting class.
He weighed offers from Boston College, Cal, Cincinnati, North Carolina, Pitt and Michigan State before enrolling at Purdue.
As the 2021 college season opened, Hammer and Nails, which covers the Boilermakers, wrote:
"Coach Jeff Brohm needs someone to be the guy. It may not be Alaimo this year, but his time is coming."
Not really.
In 2021 at Purdue, Alaimo was behind Aidan O'Connell and Jack Plummer. Plummer left for Cal in 2022, but Alaimo was still a backup, behind O'Connnell.
Follow along in a game of musical chairs in a microwave.
Plummer transferred again in 2023, to Louisville, which had hired Coach Brohm away from Purdue, which in turn got its 2023 starter out of the portal in the person of Hudson Card.
In 2022 with the Texas Longhorns, Card started three games in place of injured Quinn Ewers, a transfer from Ohio State. Card portaled to Purdue in '23 and went 4-8 as the starter.
One of Card's losses was to Ohio State, whose 2023 quarterback was Kyle McCord, who since transferred to Syracuse, whose 2023 quarterback was Garrett Shrader, who began his career at Mississippi State.
The NCAA introduced the portal in 2018, partly so transferring would be more efficient and transparent. Pandora's Box sprang open in 2021, when players coming through the portal no longer had to sit out a year at their new schools.
Woody Barrett landed at Kent State before the new rule kicked in.
He came out of Winter Garden, Florida, committing to Auburn, saying he aimed to be the next Cam Newton. He spent 2016 at Auburn and 2017 at a community college.
Since the community college wasn't an NCAA entity, Barrett didn't have to sit out when he enrolled at Kent State in 2018. He started for a Golden Flashes team that went 2-10.
He was Kent State's opening-day QB in 2019 but was benched in Game 2, replaced by former Ohio Mr. Football finalist Dustin Crum, from Grafton Midview High School.
Playing at the end of the era when most transfers had to sit out a year, Crum posted a 17-14 record as Kent State's starter from 2019-21.
Collin Schlee, a Maryland high school star who arrived at Kent State in 2019, replaced Crum as the starter in 2022. When Kent State head coach Sean Lewis left to be Deion Sanders' offensive coordinator at Colorado in 2023, Schlee transferred to UCLA. He transferred again, to Virginia Tech, in April of 2024.
Following Schlee into the portal were Kent State's other best 2022 offensive players, running back Marquez Cooper (Ball State) and receivers Devontez Walker (North Carolina) and Dante Cephas (Penn State).
Alaimo arrived at Kent State in May 2023.
Perhaps the portal was good for Alaimo, who went from Purdue backup to Kent State starter, but it was toxic to the Golden Flashes, who went 1-11 under new head coach Kenni Burns.
For better or for worse, the portal pervades, at Kent State and around the MAC.
Here is a tour of Ohio's other MAC teams in terms of what's going on in quarterback movement.
Toledo Rockets
Detroit native Dequan Finn was 2023 MAC Player of the Year after leading the Rockets on an 11-game win streak. He played in the MAC championship game, a loss to Miami, then dove in the portal and came out at Baylor.
Baylor's primary 2023 QB during a 3-9 season was Blake Shapen, who since transferred to Mississippi State, whose main 2023 QB was Will Rogers, who since portaled away to Washington.
Finn abandoned Toledo before a bowl game, a 16-15 loss to Wyoming in which the Rockets' QB was Tucker Gleason, who had been at Georgia Tech.
Akron Zips
Given the Zips' 7-44 record across the last five seasons, it's hard to believe the university fired head coach Lee Owens after a 7-5 finish in 2003, Charlie Frye's junior year.
Akron has used five starting QBs amidst the five-year slump, Kato Nelson, Zach Gibson, Demarcus Irons Jr., Jeff Undercuffler and Tahj Bullock.
Gibson took the most snaps for Akron in 2021 and had three years of eligibility left, but he transferred to Georgia Tech, where he made three 2022 starts as an injury replacement.
Gibson's bid to be Georgia Tech's 2023 QB was scuttled by incoming transfer Haynes King, a transfer who started some games at Texas A&M in 2022, including a 24-20 loss at No. 1 Alabama. Gibson didn't see the field in 2023 and veered into the transfer portal a second time, landing at Georgia State.
Irons arrived at Akron in 2021 after playing for Iowa Central Community College. He started 10 games for the Zips in 2022 and made third-team, All-MAC.
Irons suffered a season-ending injury five games into the 2023 season and was replaced by Bullock, who transferred in from Virginia Tech earlier in the year.
Bullock soon was replaced by Undercuffler, who spent three years at Albany before portaling to Akron in 2022. Undercuffler led a comeback win over Kent State but otherwise was 0-4 as the starter.
Ohio Bobcats
Kurtis Rourke arrived as a freshman in 2019 and stayed quite a while. In 2022, he won MAC Offensive Player of the Year. He started again in 2023 but hit the transfer portal after the regular-season finale against Akron, landing at Indiana.
Rourke departed before the Bobcats played in the Myrtle Beach Bowl, in which their quarterback was Parker Navarro, who came through the portal in 2022 from Central Florida, whose starting QB became John Rhys Plumlee, who spent 2021 at Mississippi.
Miami RedHawks
Brett Gabbert arrived with a name − his brother Blaine was a No. 10 overall pick in the 2011 draft − and started as a true freshman in 2019.
When healthy, Gabbert was the starter for the next four years, but his repeated injuries put the job in the hands of AJ Mayer several times. Mayer transferred to Arkansas State in 2022.
Aveon Smith, who began his college career at Miami in 2020, was the starter when Gabbert missed time in 2022 and '23. Smith entered the transfer portal in December after Gabbert announced he was returning for the 2024 season. Smith's 2024 team is Alabama A&M.
Smith's exit forced the RedHawks to use Maddox Kopp and Henry Hesson in the Cure Bowl against Appalachian State. Kopp transferred in from Colorado, where he was unwanted by new head coach ( Deion Sanders) .
Bowling Green Falcons
After wrapping up his Kettering Alter career in the 2018 state finals in Canton, Connor Bazelak signed with Missouri. He started for a 5-5 Missouri team in 2020 and started again in 2021, but was replaced for a bowl game by Brady Cook.
Bazelak hit the transfer portal and landed at Indiana, where he started most of 2022 for a 4-8 team. He was benched in November during a 56-14 loss at Ohio State.
After Dexter Williams II started Indiana's last two games, Bazelak hit the portal a second time and came out at Bowling Green, where he went 6-5 as the 2023 starter.
Bowling Green's 2022 starter was Matt McDonald, a transfer from Boston College.
Bowling Green's 24-13 win at Buffalo last October painted an almost amusing picture of the transfer portal.
Bazelak, on his third school, was replaced by Camden Orth, a transfer from Long Island. Buffalo also used two QBs, Cole Snyder, a transfer from Rutgers, and C.J. Ogbonna, a transfer from Southeast Missouri State.
Another Bowling Green quarterback, Hayden Timosciek, who transferred in from Purdue, re-entered the portal after the '23 campaign as a 6-foot-7, 235-pound player open to converting to tight end.
All in all, an examination of the transfer portal through the lens of MAC quarterbacks conjures images of footballs fired into tornadoes.
Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Year of the Quarterback, Part 7. Roethlisberger, Frye, Cribbs played in a different world
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