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College football’s transfer portal has already given us plenty of unusual recruitments over the years, and Kadyn Proctor is the most recent addition to the list. After transferring from Alabama to Iowa in January, on the heels of a True Freshman All-American season, the former five-star recruit is set to re-enter the portal when the spring window opens and return to the Crimson Tide. 247Sports chronicled Proctor’s grass-was-not-greener revelation last week in an extensively-reported article.

Proctor is just the latest example of the new reality when it comes to player movement in college football in the transfer portal era.

Thousands of players enter the portal each year, and many of those players do so multiple times throughout their careers, leading to some interesting college journeys that may not have been possible in the past.

Get the latest football and basketball transfer portal news from 247Sports.

With that in mind, and with today being April Fools’, here are some of the recent examples of unusual transfer portal journeys.

A former five-star recruit out of Des Moines (Iowa) Southeast Polk, Proctor was pledged to the in-state Hawkeyes for nearly six months before flipping to Alabama on the day before the start of the early signing period in 2022.

The 6-foot-7, 360-pounder went on to start all 14 games at left tackle in his first season in Tuscaloosa, garnering True Freshman All-America honors and helping the Crimson Tide reach the College Football Playoff.

But after head coach Nick Saban’s retirement following the season, Proctor hit the transfer portal one week later and transferred back home to play for Kirk Ferentz and the Hawkeyes.

And now, after less than two months in Iowa City, Proctor is set to re-enter the portal and head back to Alabama, this time to play for a new head coach in Kalen DeBoer.

“Throw all those things in a pot – the lukewarm reception at Iowa, the relationships that he kept with teammates at Alabama, the coaching change, and, of course, Proctor’s age – and you begin to get an idea of how we got here, on the verge of a boomerang transfer unlike the sport has ever seen,” wrote Alex Scarborough and David Eickholt.

Another former five-star recruit, Bru McCoy’s college journey was a roller coaster from the jump.

The Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei product committed to USC at the All-American Bowl in January 2019 and enrolled the following week, where he was set to play for then-newly hired offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury.

But McCoy’s first stint at USC was short-lived — 17 days, to be exact — as Kingsbury’s departure for the Arizona Cardinals head coaching job prompted the wide receiver to transfer to Texas to play for Tom Herman.

His time in Austin did not last much longer, however. He spent just one semester with the Longhorns, going through spring practice with the team before transferring back to USC.

After redshirting with the Trojans in 2019, McCoy went on to play in all six games with three starts during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, catching 21 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns.

But McCoy was arrested in July 2021 for suspicion of felony intimate partner violence, leading to a season-long suspension as he was banned from campus during a Title IX investigation.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office ultimately declined to file charges, citing insufficient evidence, and the Title IX complaint was eventually closed.

But the legal issues led to McCoy transferring for a third time, ending up at Tennessee under head coach Josh Heupel, where McCoy promptly turned in a breakout season in 2022 with 52 receptions for 667 yards and four touchdowns across 12 starts.

He had 17 grabs for 217 yards and one score through five games in 2023 before suffering a season-ending ankle injury that required four surgeries, but he is now set to return to Knoxville for his final season of eligibility.

Initially ranked as the No. 1 overall prospect in the class of 2022, Quinn Ewers committed to Texas and the aforementioned Herman in August 2020, only to decommit from the in-state program after just over two months and later commit to Ohio State.

The Southlake (Texas) Carroll product opted to skip his final season of high school football, reclassifying to 2021 and enrolling in Columbus that August ahead of the season.

But he played just two offensive snaps for the Buckeyes that fall before entering the transfer portal in December and returning to the Lone Star State to play for head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns.

Ewers has started 22 games under center for Texas over the past two seasons, and he already ranks eighth in program history in career passing yards (5,656) and tied for seventh in career passing touchdowns (37).

He completed 69% of his passes for 3,479 yards with 22 touchdowns against six interceptions last season en route to second-team All-Big 12 honors, leading the Longhorns to their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance and the program’s first Big 12 championship since 2009.

Ewers announced his return to Texas for the 2024 season rather than entering the NFL Draft.

An Oklahoma legacy whose father Charles and brother Kendal both played quarterback for the Sooners, Casey Thompson’s collegiate career did not start in Norman.

Instead, the former three-star recruit out of Newcastle (Okla.) High spent his first five college seasons playing for the Sooners’ biggest rival, spending four seasons at Texas after signing with Herman and the Longhorns as a class of 2018 prospect.

Thompson then spent one year at Nebraska before reuniting with Herman for a one-year stint at Florida Atlantic.

After spending his first three seasons at Texas as a backup, Thompson took over as the Longhorns starter in 2021 — Sarkisian’s first season in Austin — throwing for 2,113 yards on 63.2% passing with 28 total touchdowns to nine interceptions.

But Texas landed Ewers via the transfer portal that December, which led to Thompson entering the portal himself and transferring to Nebraska.

He battled through injuries and the midseason firing of head coach Scott Frost in his lone season in Lincoln, but Thompson still managed to account for 22 total touchdowns with 2,407 passing yards over 10 starts.

Thompson hit the portal for a third time in April 2023 and landed with Herman at FAU, where he suffered a season-ending ACL tear just three games into the year. But he was granted a medical hardship waiver by the NCAA, allowing him to return for a seventh season.

Now, after his fourth trip to the transfer portal, Thompson is heading back home to finish out his career with the program that his father and brother played for in Oklahoma.

He is set to back up highly-touted sophomore Jackson Arnold, giving the Sooners a veteran presence in the quarterback room following Dillon Gabriel’s transfer to Oregon.

f Lubbock (Texas) Lubbock-Cooper in the class of 2017, Jarret Doege started his career at Bowling Green, where he threw for more than 4,000 yards with 39 touchdowns against 15 interceptions across 19 games.

He subsequently transferred to West Virginia in 2019 to play for head coach Neal Brown, who previously coached his other brother Seth at Texas Tech.

Doege started 27 games over three seasons with the Mountaineers, completing 64.8% of his passes for 6,453 yards, 40 touchdowns and 19 picks.

Doege’s second trip to the transfer portal came after the 2021 season, and he landed at Western Kentucky. But after going through spring practice with the team and eventually losing a battle for the Hilltoppers’ starting quarterback job in fall camp, he entered the portal for the third time in August 2022 and transferred to Troy.

Though he spent most of that season as the Trojans’ backup, Doege did come off the bench to lead Troy to a comeback win over Western Kentucky less than two months after leaving the Hilltoppers. He replaced injured starter Gunnar Watson late in the third quarter and went on to finish 7-of-8 passing for 71 yards and two fourth-quarter touchdowns.

Doege finished his six-year collegiate career with 11,069 passing yards and 84 touchdown passes.

There are many unique stories in this article, but only Cam McCormick is doing something that is completely unprecedented — returning for a ninth season of college football in 2024!

The former three-star recruit out of Bend (Ore.) Summit signed with Oregon in the class of 2016 (!!!) — the same recruiting class as Justin Herbert — and spent his first seven seasons in Eugene, a tenure spanning four head coaches in Mark Helfrich, Willie Taggart, Mario Cristobal and Dan Lanning.

After McCormick redshirted his first season at Oregon while recovering from an ACL tear from his senior season of high school, he appeared in all 13 games for the Ducks in 2017, catching six passes for 89 yards and one touchdown. But that would be his final healthy season for quite some time.

He entered 2018 as the Ducks’ starting tight end, but he suffered a season-ending injury in the season opener — a torn ankle ligament and broken leg. Complications from that injury resulted in him missing the 2019 and 2020 seasons, and after he finally returned to the field in 2021, he played just two games before suffering a torn Achilles in his right foot.

McCormick returned to play his second full season in 2022, finishing with 10 catches for 66 yards and three touchdowns over 13 games (six starts). Then, after his seventh season in Eugene, the tight end entered the transfer portal in January 2023 and rejoined one of his former head coaches, Cristobal, at Miami.

McCormick’s first season in Coral Gables was a success as he appeared in all 13 games with 11 starts and caught eight passes for 62 yards. And now, after successfully petitioning for a ninth season of eligibility, McCormick is set to return to the Hurricanes for his final season in 2024.