College football fans watched one of the saddest sights in sports history unfold in real-time.
Iowa State football went from thriving program to hollowed-out shell in three weeks.
And Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis just called out Iowa State football's transfer portal nightmare that has the entire GOP fired up.
Matt Campbell's exit triggered a roster exodus that left politicians stunned
When Matt Campbell bolted from Iowa State to take the Penn State job on December 8, nobody expected what came next.
The Cyclones lost over 40 players to the transfer portal in less than a month — 16 of them starters.¹
That includes three-year starting quarterback Rocco Becht, who threw for more than 9,200 career passing yards with 64 touchdowns during Campbell's tenure.²
Running back Carson Hansen, tight end Ben Brahmer, wide receiver Chase Sowell, and both starting cornerbacks Jontez Williams and Jeremiah Cooper all announced they're hitting the road.
Iowa State went 8-4 in 2025 and nearly made the College Football Playoff in 2024 after an 11-3 season.
Now they're fielding basically an entirely new roster with only 17 players coming back — and only one of those was a starter.³
That's not rebuilding a program.
That's burning it to the ground.
The transfer portal officially opens January 2, 2026, giving new head coach Jimmy Rogers just seven days to try convincing dozens of players he's never met that they should stay.
"The portal opens January 2nd," Rogers explained during his introductory press conference. "Um, it will be open for 14 days and I'm going to have roughly 7 days to get to know them and who they are and try to connect with them and build a relationship all within a week. That's really hard to do. Because they don't know me, their parents don't know me."⁴
Rogers was hired from Washington State on December 6 — just two days before Campbell officially left.
He's trying to stop the bleeding before it's too late, but the damage is already done.
Cruz and DeSantis sound the alarm on college football's broken system
Texas Senator Ted Cruz watched the Iowa State situation unfold and had seen enough.
"An absolute crisis," Cruz wrote on X. "Congress NEEDS to act. For months, I've been working night & day to try to bring Republicans and Democrats together to save college sports."⁵
"If we fail to do so, it will be an utter tragedy. And it's happening right before our eyes," he added.
Cruz introduced the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act in 2023 to try fixing this mess.
The bill would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to protect the organization from lawsuits over eligibility rules while stopping athletes from becoming employees of their schools.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis piled on by sharing Cruz's post with a simple message: "Reform is needed."⁶
Both politicians recognize what millions of college football fans already know — the current system is destroying the sport they grew up watching.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2005794952949948761?s=20
The days of watching players develop from wide-eyed freshmen into senior veterans are gone.
Players now treat schools like rental cars, ditching them the second a better offer comes along or their coach leaves.
Iowa State running the same offense for a decade under Campbell?
Doesn't matter — everyone's leaving anyway.
Built the program into its winningest stretch in history?
Who cares — Penn State's paying more.
The NCAA created this disaster and refuses to fix it
The NCAA approved unlimited transfers in recent years, meaning players can bounce from school to school as many times as they want without sitting out a season.⁷
Combined with Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals that let schools essentially pay players through boosters, college football has turned into free agency on steroids.
The transfer portal used to have two windows — one in December and another in April.
More than 1,000 FBS players entered the portal during the April window alone in 2025.⁸
The NCAA finally changed the rules in October 2025 to have just one 15-day window from January 2-16, eliminating the spring portal entirely.⁹
But here's the sick part — even with a coaching change, players now only get 15 days to enter the portal, and that window doesn't even open until five days after a new coach is hired.
Iowa State's situation exposed the ugly truth.
Campbell left on December 8.
Rogers was hired on December 6 — before Campbell even officially left.
By the time the transfer portal opens January 2, the damage was already done with 40+ players announcing their intentions to leave.
The NCAA's new rules were supposed to stop this exact scenario.
Instead, they created a ticking time bomb where players feel pressured to announce early or risk missing out.
Look at what happened to Iowa State — players started bailing weeks before the portal even opened because they were terrified of being left without a landing spot.
The system punishes loyalty and rewards mercenaries.
Penn State will likely poach several of Campbell's former Iowa State players since he brought his offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser and quarterbacks coach Jake Waters with him.
Becht, the Cyclones' three-year starting QB, is the top target with Drew Allar leaving for the NFL.¹⁰
Tight end Ben Brahmer — the top-ranked tight end in the portal who caught 37 passes for 446 yards and six touchdowns in 2025 — is being recruited hard by Campbell since Mouser was also his position coach at Iowa State.¹¹
Safety Marcus Neal Jr., who led the Cyclones in tackles with 77 this season, could follow Campbell too.¹²
This isn't building a program anymore.
https://twitter.com/TheBrancaShow/status/2006492693296451687?s=20
It's raiding your old team for parts.
Congress needs to step in because the NCAA has proven it can't govern itself.
Cruz's SCORE Act would establish actual rules instead of this Wild West chaos.
It would force revenue sharing — schools would have to give athletes at least 22% of average annual college sports revenue from the 70 highest-earning schools.¹³
And it would prohibit schools from using student fees to fund NIL payments, stopping universities from sticking regular students with the bill for these deals.
Iowa State's collapse isn't an outlier anymore — it's becoming the norm.
Coaches get fired or leave for better jobs, and entire rosters evaporate overnight.
Fans who spent decades supporting these programs watch helplessly as everything they built gets destroyed in three weeks.
The portal was supposed to give players more freedom.
Instead, it's killing college football.
¹ Josh Pate, "College football program loses 16 starters to transfer portal," Sports Illustrated, December 28, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ted Cruz, Twitter post, December 29, 2025.
⁴ "Iowa State Football Transfer Portal Tracker," KCCI, December 31, 2025.
⁵ Ted Cruz, Twitter post, December 29, 2025.
⁶ Ron DeSantis, Twitter post, December 30, 2025.
⁷ "NCAA Transfer Portal and Rules: The Ultimate Guide for 2025," NCSA Sports, December 22, 2025.
⁸ "NCAA approves change to new single transfer portal window," CBS Sports, October 10, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ "Penn State, Matt Campbell Emerging For Iowa State Transfers," Newsweek, December 31, 2025.
¹¹ "Penn State football rumors: Matt Campbell targeting Iowa State star reunion," ClutchPoints, December 28, 2025.
¹² "Raiding Ames: 5 Iowa State Stars Matt Campbell Should Target for Penn State," NittanyCentral, December 29, 2025.
¹³ "Ted Cruz unloads on state of college football," Fox News, December 30, 2025.
