The use of the transfer portal has come into play on a larger scale for a number of Pac-12 squads. Schools like Oregon State, Arizona, and UCLA have taken in a number of transfers during this past year, either due to it being a strategy to amass talent outside of high school recruiting (Oregon State), to bring players back close to home after stops elsewhere in the country (both Arizona and UCLA), to make up for losses to the portal in the wake of a coaching change (again, Arizona), or to fill key roles vacated by other transfers/graduations (Oregon has done this with QB Anthony Brown, Washington State added Tennessee QB transfer Jarrett Guarantano to battle for the starting job, Utah added two transfer QBs).

As far as the transfer portal goes in 2021, these are the numbers of players that each team in the conference has taken.

Arizona: 16

Arizona State: 7

Cal: 4 (including one preferred walk-on)

Colorado: 7

Oregon: 0

Oregon State: 8

Stanford: 0

UCLA: 7

USC: 10 (including one preferred walk-on)

Utah: 10

Washington: 5

Washington State: 7

Notably, Stanford doesn't take many transfers to begin with, with Air Force transfer QB Isaiah Sanders being the first in the transfer portal era. Oregon, who has been involved in the process for a handful of graduate trasfers, has been excelling in high school recruiting to the point of not needing to take anyone from the portal at this point.

That comes to Cal, who hasn't taken much in the portal since it started up in October of 2018. There's a couple components to Cal taking less in the portal compared to others, as the Bears have had bigger high school recruiting classes over the last three cycles than others.