Inside The Huskies

Curley Reed Finds a Portal Landing Spot at Louisiana Tech

The cornerback spent two seasons with the Huskies and appeared in just one game.

Dan Raley

Curley Reed will transfer from UW to Louisiana Tech.
Curley Reed will transfer from UW to Louisiana Tech. / Tech

At the height of his recruitment, Curley Reed emerged as a 4-star cornerback who had 26 scholarship offers, including those from many of the top college football programs in his native Louisiana.

LSU. Tulane. Louisiana Tech.

After coming back from major knee surgery and spending a pair of uneventful seasons at the University of Washington -- appearing briefly in just one game -- Reed went home to Lake Charles, located near the Louisiana-Texas state line, and entered the transfer portal last week, hoping to rekindle his football career.

It didn't take long -- over the weekend, Tech took him.

The 6-foot-1, 191-pound redshirt freshman will join a program that went 5-7 this season but was the last team to receive a bowl bid, even with a losing record, because it replaced short-handed Marshall in the Independence Bowl against Army that will be held on Saturday in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Reed will play for the Bulldogs of Conference USA who onced helped make quarterback Terry Bradshaw into a Hall of Fame player, a first-round NFL draft pick and a four-time Super Bowl winner with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and now turns up on Sundays on FOX NFL with expert analysis and nonstop wisecracks, and in the occasional Hollywood film such as "Failure to Launch."

Reed was a can't-miss player until tearing up a knee entering his junior season at Lake Charles College Prep and it's been a long road back for him.

In Montlake, he arrived in what was considered a blue-chip cornerback class with fellow 4-star recruit Caleb Presley and 3-star Leroy Bryant, with Presley still waiting to get on the field after two seasons and Bryant appearing in a dozen games in that time.

The Huskies provided him with a trip home to Louisiana a year ago, when they faced and beat Texas 37-31 in the CFP semifinals and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

Reed still needs to regain that cornerback burst that will get him onto the field and on his way with his career, but he's back in familiar surroundings.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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