Pitt Football Offers UTSA Transfer Starting OL

The Pitt Panthers offered a UTSA transfer offensive lineman.

Sep 25, 2021; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; A Pittsburgh Panthers helmet on the sidelines against the New Hampshire Wildcats during the first quarter at Heinz Field. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

PITTSBURGH -- The Pitt Panthers continue scouring the country for new talent in the transfer portal, especially for the offensive line.

CJ James, a redshirt senior offensive lineman who played for UTSA this past season, announced that Pitt offered him.

Blessed for the Offer! pic.twitter.com/XNSLo1J4oD

— CJ James (@BigC5One) December 30, 2024

James, who stands at 6-foot-3 and 310 pounds, hails from Springfield, Mass. He helped his team, Springfield Central High School, win the 2019 Massachusetts State Championship.

He would start out at Lackawanna College, a junior college, where he redshirted. He then transferred to Abilene Christian, an FCS program, and started 11 games at center and leading his team to a 5-6 record, around 180 rushing yards per game and near 400 yards of offense per game.

James then transferred to New Mexico and spent two seasons there, 2022 and 2023.

He would start the first seven games in 2022 at center, suffered an injury that forced him to miss a game, then started the following two games at right guard and going back to center and starting the final two games there.

James then started all 12 games at center for the Lobos in 2023, playing in 827 snaps on offense.

He transferred to UTSA for this past season and started all 13 games at center, playing in a career-high 1,004 snaps.

James earned an extra year of eligibility from the NCAA, who gave a waiver for next season to student-athletes who played at a non-NCAA school for one or two years. Since James played at a junior college (JUCO), he earned one more season for 2025.

The decision from the NCAA came five days after a federal judge in Tennessee granted an injuction, that allowed Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who played JUCO ball before his first season at the school this fall, another year of college football.

He holds another offer from Arizona and will visit them, Ole Miss and South Carolina, according to an interview he did with Chris Clark of Gamecockcentral.com.

Pitt has already got one offensive lineman in the transfer portal, securing the services of rising redshirt senior Kendall Stanley from Charlotte. They also landed two other transfers in rising sixth year wide receiver Deuce Spann from Florida State and rising junior placekicker James London from Murray State.

The Panthers will still have a number of scholarship offensive lineman headed into 2025. This includes rising redshirt seniors in Terrence Enos Jr. and Lyndon Cooper, rising redshirt juniors in Ryan Baer, Isaiah Montgomery and Jackson Brown, rising junior BJ Williams, rising redshirt sophomores in Ryan Caretta and Tai Ray and rising redshirt freshmen in Caleb Holmes, Jiavanni Cooley, Adham Abouraya, Mason Lindsay and Moritz Schmoranzer.

They also have four incoming offensive lineman in the Class of 2025, who signed their National Letter of Intent on Dec. 4.

This includes Shep Turk from nearby Thomas Jefferson High School in Jefferson Hills, Pa., Torian Chester from Westover High School in Albany, Ga., Jordan Fields out of North Shore High School in Houston and Akram Elnagmi, who hails from the NFL Academy in London, U.K.

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