Among the struggles? Finding yourself on a visit and another player takes your roster spot.

EIGHT DAYS ON the road. Six college visits. More than 6,000 miles traveled across the country and back. After starting 10 games in the SEC at Missouri last season, Beau Pribula expected his transfer portal experience in January to be one school, one trip, done deal. The first visit was supposed to be a mere formality, with a coaching staff he knew well, before he signed and enrolled for his senior year. The veteran quarterback found out the hard way what can happen if those initial plans go awry.

"I had no idea it was going to turn into what it did," Pribula said. When 34 different Power 4 programs are searching for starting quarterbacks at the same time during a two-week transfer window, expect the unexpected. These passers are making life-altering decisions in mere days. The process has become high-stakes musical chairs now that schools are ponying up $3 million or more for proven starters. Schools want to get deals done immediately after the portal opens, if not sooner. If the quarterback hesitates, someone else grabs that opportunity. If the deal falls through for the school, they're in trouble. The elimination of the spring transfer window meant that, for all parties, it was absolutely imperative to get this right in January. But the nature of this frenzied two-week period leaves every opportunity to get it wrong.

Every transfer quarterback has their own tale of how their move this offseason played out, and we're about to find out how their decision paid off. But they're not all on parallel paths making their own decisions. Sometimes those paths converge and collide. In Pribula's case, his recruitment became entangled with the fate of 10 other transfer quarterbacks. You wouldn't get it, these quarterbacks say, if you haven't gone through it.

"I don't think people fully understand just how crazy and cutthroat it is," Priubla said. "You're taking everything into consideration with just such little amount of time."