College Football HQ

Auburn signs transfer QB Jackson Arnold for 2025 football season

Auburn lands one of the better transfer portal quarterbacks, as Jackson Arnold has signed with the Tigers for the 2025 football season, the school confirmed.

James Parks

College football transfer quarterback Jackson Arnold is heading to Auburn for the 2025 season, according to insiders.
College football transfer quarterback Jackson Arnold is heading to Auburn for the 2025 season, according to insiders. / William Purnell-Imagn Images
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Former Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold has signed with Auburn for the 2025 football season out of the NCAA transfer portal, the school announced.

“His deep ball has been very accurate,” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze said.

“Didn’t throw a ton this year because they dealt with injuries at his previous school, so he didn’t have a lot of shots but going back and watching all his Elite 11 and high school competition, he throws the deep ball as well as you see at most any level.”

“A winner,” he added. “He’s going to create a swagger around our offense that draws people to want to play at a higher level.”

Arnold appeared in seven games as a reserve during the 2023 season for the Sooners, making one start, before being named the No. 1 option for the team heading into this fall.

But things didn’t pan out exactly as he hoped.

Arnold was benched after a substandard beginning to the 2024 season in which he threw seven touchdowns with 3 interceptions in more than three games’ worth of action.

The quarterback then split time with Michael Hawkins, finishing the year 154 for 246 passing for 1,421 yards and 12 touchdowns with 3 picks.

He also ran for 444 yards and 3 additional touchdowns.

Auburn has been in the market for a starting quarterback after Payton Thorne handled the position for the last two seasons, with varying degrees of success and failure.

Thorne finished with 2,713 yards and 21 touchdowns with 9 interceptions, running fof 283 yards and 2 more touchdowns.

“The fit he is for our offense and for Auburn, I couldn’t be more excited,” Freeze said.

“He’s a dual-threat guy who understands the RPO system extremely well and throws the deep ball extremely well.”

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How the college football transfer portal works

The NCAA Transfer Portal is a private database that includes the names of student-athletes in every sport at the Division I, II, and III levels. The full list of names is not available to the public.

A player can enter their name into the transfer portal through their school's compliance office.

Once a player gives written notification of their intent to transfer, the office puts the player's name into the database, and they officially become a transfer.

The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player's request and NCAA rules forbid anyone from refusing that request.

The database includes the player's name, contact information, info on whether the player was on scholarship, and if he is a graduate student.

Once a player's name appears in the transfer portal database, other schools are free to contact the player, who can change his mind at any point in the process and withdraw from the transfer portal.

Notably, once a player enters the portal, his school no longer has to honor the athletic scholarship it gave him.

And if that player decides to leave the portal and return to his original school, the school doesn't have to give him another scholarship.

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James Parks
JAMES PARKS

James Parks is the founder and publisher of College Football HQ. He previously covered football for 247Sports and CBS Interactive. College Football HQ joined the Sports Illustrated Fannation Network in 2022.

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