The idea of the trade deadline in professional sports is always a more intriguing concept in theory than it is in practice.
Most teams are loath to wave the white flag on a season and unwilling to give up precious future assets when chasing after potentially marginal gains. The big trades involving superstars—with some rare exceptions in the NBA and, maybe, the NFL this year—are often pushed to the offseason when there can be a better assessment of the roster and more immediate payoff for any draft capital acquired.
As much as it is being increasingly professionalized, college football has no such roster-building mechanism. The group you have coming out of spring football is largely the group you’re going to finish the campaign with. Lose a player to injury or have someone underperforming? Well, the solution cannot arrive until next year.
But what if that wasn’t the case? The first set of College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday provides a natural line of division in the 2025 season between teams in the hunt for something meaningful and those who are already looking over the roster to see how ’26 is shaping up. What if the sport without a trade deadline had one this week so some teams could improve their fortunes and allow others to build for the future?
Here are five theoretical trades that could make sense for players plus their current, and future, programs.
Missouri receives: QB LaNorris Sellers
South Carolina receives: QB Matt Zollers, RB Marquise Davis, and 2026 WR Jabari Brady
A rare intraconference trade for a star quarterback? Why not?
The Gamecocks are among the most disappointing teams in the country in 2025 and will need a lot to happen even to make a bowl game. Things are so bad for Shane Beamer that he’s fired the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach already and has badly wasted another year of Sellers’s development. Missouri, on the other hand, is still on the fringes of CFP contention with some serious issues at quarterback following injuries to the top two players on the depth chart. As high as the Tigers are about true freshman Zollers, he could be a par of a new, younger core for the Gamecocks next season while giving Sellers an opportunity to play in some meaningful games under a head coach who knows how to develop the position.
Don’t discount the message this theoretical trade could send either, with the Tigers likely having to fight off several big-name SEC programs this offseason for Eli Drinkwitz to remain in Columbia, Mo., and what it would say by going all out to give him what he wants to win in November.
Georgia receives: DL Anthony Smith
Minnesota receives: RB Josh McCray, QB Ryan Montgomery and LB Darren Ikinnagbon
The Bulldogs have not racked up an inordinate amount of sacks in recent years despite their ability to pressure the quarterback fairly consistently under Kirby Smart. This season, however, Georgia has some issues in obvious passing downs (just eight sacks in all of 2025) and getting off the field on third down (76th in FBS in opponent third-down conversions).
Enter Smith, who has notched four sacks in the Gophers’ past two wins and is tied atop the Big Ten with a season total of 8.5. He’s been impressive off the edge and has even added 11.5 tackles for loss as the focal point for a stingy front seven. He has great size at 6' 5", 280 pounds and enough power that he could occasionally line up in different spots to complement the talent up front for the Bulldogs.
P.J. Fleck’s team lands a backup/potential competition for Drake Lindsey in former four-star signal-caller Montgomery (who is from Ohio), a high-upside defender in Ikinnagbon and a potential solution to the Big Ten’s third-worst rushing attack in former Illinois star McCray. The latter was supposed to be a big portal addition to Georgia’s backfield, but he has only 32 carries this season. He could also help boost a Minnesota offense that is just a tick above 55% (105th in the country) in scoring touchdowns in the red zone.
Penn State receives: Texas OT Nick Brooks, Texas OGs Devin Coleman and Jordan Coleman
Colorado receives: Texas DL Isaiah Coleman
Texas receives: Penn State OG Olaivavega Ioane and Colorado OT Jordan Seaton
Arch Manning has started to play better as of late, but he still needs some reinforcements up front if Texas truly wants to make a run at another CFP trip. Enter this three-team deal that lands big upgrades for the Horns at both guard and tackle from two teams, Penn State and Colorado, who are playing out the string on disappointing 2025 seasons.
Ioane is Pro Football Focus’s highest-rated pass blocker among interior lineman this season and could further boost his stock with big-time matchups against Georgia and Texas A&M. Seaton has been one of the few bright spots for the Buffs at tackle but would wind up on a stage his talent is deserving of in the stretch run at Texas.
Meanwhile, Brooks is a mammoth tackle prospect headed to State College, Pa., after struggling for stretches in his three starts this season, but has the tools to become a nice building block for the program’s new coach. As for Colorado, it offered two of the three Coleman triplets out of high school and could use more young players to build around. It probably doesn’t hurt that they all hail from Cedar Hill in the Dallas–Fort Worth area where Buffs coach Deion Sanders used to live and coach.
Nebraska receives: RB Bryan Jackson and WR Prince Strachan
USC receives: RB Emmett Johnson
The Trojans have remained in the hunt for a CFP at-large bid despite most of their running back room making their way to the injury tent this season and forcing Lincoln Riley to turn to a walk-on recently.
That’s where Johnson comes into play as an option for the team that he just played last week. The Cornhuskers won’t have QB Dylan Raiola the rest of the year and could turn their attention to what they can add to the team for his eventual return in 2026, especially with a tailback who is draft eligible at the end of the year. Jackson has shown flashes in limited action and provides the type of big bruiser with burst that could fit Nebraska’s offense well. They could also benefit from bringing in Strachan, who could be a natural successor to Dane Key given his size and probably wouldn’t mind more targets this year given how stacked the receiving room is in Los Angeles.
Syracuse receives: QB Athan Kaliakmanis
Rutgers receives: 2026 recruits Ibn Muhammad and Gemaus Sackie
It’s been rough around the Dome for the Orange with five straight losses since starting QB Steve Angeli went down with an injury, significantly changing the outlook for a team that had early momentum sapped quite a bit in turning to more inexperienced options. There’s still an outside shot at a bowl game—or at least to play spoiler—down the stretch for Fran Brown’s team and they could become far more watchable if they landed a signal-caller like Kaliakmanis.
The senior is in the top 15 nationally in yards per game and could fit in well with the system that Syracuse runs to give the team an uplift while allowing for Rutgers to build a little toward the future given the uphill battle they have to make it to six wins. Muhammad and Sackie are the Orange’s top two recruits they have committed from New Jersey and could be freshmen who play early on for the local Big Ten team.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Imagining Five Deals We’d Like to See in a 2025 College Football Trade Deadline .
