Former Western Kentucky offensive lineman Rodney Newsom will transfer to play for South Carolina this upcoming season, On3’s Pete Nakos reported. Newsom spent just one season with the Hilltoppers and will have two years of eligibility remaining.

The 6-foot-3 offensive lineman played in all 14 games at WKU this past season. He joined the team in the offseason after spending one year at Itawamba Community College in Mississippi.

Newsom played high school football at Briarcrest Christian (TN), where he was a three-star recruit in the 2020 class. He ranked as the No. 2,256 overall player and No. 158 interior offensive lineman in the cycle according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Newsom began his college career at Memphis and played two seasons with the Tigers prior to going to Itawamba. As a transfer, he ranks as the No. 119 overall player and No. 11 interior offensive lineman according to On3’s Transfer Portal Player Rankings.

Rodney Newsom is the seventh commitment in the Gamecocks’ transfer portal class, joining EDGE Jaylen Brown (Missouri), interior offensive lineman Nick Sharpe (Wake Forest), tight end Jordan Dingle (Kentucky), defensive tackle Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy (Texas A&M), LB Shawn Murphy, and QB Air Noland (OSU).

The portal officially opened on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. More than 2,800 FBS scholarship players entered their names into the NCAA’s transfer database during the 2023-24 school year. Removing those who withdrew or went pro, the final total sat at 2,707 transfers.

So far this cycle, 2,160 players have entered the transfer portal with 676 of those already having committed to new schools.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire.

The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

LaNorris Sellers signs new NIL deal with South Carolina for 2025 return

South Carolina star quarterback LaNorris Sellers has inked a new NIL deal with the Gamecocks’ NIL collective Garnet Trust, securing his return to Columbia for the 2025 season. Sellers holds an On3 NIL Valuation of $2.7 million.

His new deal now secures his return for 2025. Sellers put together an impressive 2024 season after taking over as South Carolina’s starting quarterback. He threw for 2,274 yards and 17 touchdowns in the air while adding 655 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on the ground.

Those numbers helped lead the Gamecocks to a 9-3 record, including a six-game win streak to end the year to just miss out on the College Football Playoff.

South Carolina had to hold off suitors for Sellers, as multiple schools made efforts in recent weeks for the quarterback to jump in the transfer portal. Garnet Trust declined to give specifics on the agreement but sources told On3 it’s on pace with other top quarterback deals in college football.

“Ever since the LSU game, he’s been having programs reach out to his people,” a Power 4 personnel staffer recently told On3 about the LaNorris Sellers situation. “Then as he kept balling out he’s only had more and more programs reach out. I mean he had playoff-caliber teams blowing up his phone like crazy before the Clemson game. After? That shit hasn’t stopped ringing.”

On3’s Pete Nakos contributed to this report.

There hasn’t been much to complain about since Mark Pope took over at Kentucky back in April. He’s been a PR gold mine since day one while stacking up roster, staff and recruiting wins in the months since, then picked up statement on-court victories vs. Duke, Gonzaga and Louisville in the non-conference schedule before the turn of the new year. If you were to give him a grade on his early coaching report card, anything besides a big ‘A’ would be crazy.

The Clemson loss was his first misstep, but you could find positives there, specifically with the team’s second-half run to even the rebounding battle — and nearly the game overall, the Wildcats cutting it to two in the final seconds. Then came the real black eye: Kentucky folding like a lawn chair in New York City, falling to Ohio State by 20 points in a game the Buckeyes controlled from what felt like the opening tip.

Pope said it was a performance that would force him to ‘lose a lot of sleep’ in the coming days, promising to ‘find answers’ and ‘learn how to function at a better level when were under this particular type of duress.’ How is he feeling about his group after returning to Lexington ahead of the holidays after some time off?

He’s excited, but frustrated. Or is he frustrated, but excited? Either way, those are the emotions he’s feeling after laying an egg in the Big Apple.

“I’m really excited. What a bad night, just devastating. It was just the worst, the worst ever,” he said during his call-in radio show. “To do it in that venue wearing this jersey, it’s devastating. … There’s nothing you can do with it but help dig in and help it make you better, right? And in long conversations with our guys and our staff and digging into the numbers, the nuts and bolts, it’s also exciting to grow and get better, and to move forward.”

When you stumble in that fashion, an opportunity to regroup presents itself, learning from mistakes in a way you wouldn’t have felt without getting punched in the mouth. Even the best teams hit those walls over the course of a great season.

He hopes that’s the case with this one.

“There are always moments where there are just galvanizing moments, right? The championship teams have those moments, for sure, whether they show up in practice or in a game, or wherever they show up because you overcame something exceptional in a moment — or you failed to do it,” Pope said. “There’s just a series of galvanizing moments, and what championship teams do is whatever they have as they go along, the story is still being written, right? That’s what you do throughout the course of the season.”

It’s their season loss on the year, and almost certainly won’t be their last. It’s an all-time SEC schedule ahead with as many as 13 teams on pace to make the NCAA Tournament. The league is going to eat itself alive going into postseason play.

How will the Wildcats respond? That’s all that matters right now — and down the road when those moments come.

“You keep writing and keep writing and keep writing,” he said. “This won’t be our last difficult moment that we have this season, for sure. The question is where does it take us.”

The Kentucky Wildcats are 10-2 on the young season and are coming off their worst performance of the Mark Pope era thus far.

Playing in the annual CBS Sports Classic, the Cats faced off against the Ohio State Buckeyes in a game many viewed as a likely win for UK in New York City.

No one told the Buckeyes that as they came out and dominated the Cats from the tip in Madison Square Garden, scoring a 20-point win.

On his Monday radio show, Coach Pope talked about the loss, and you can really tell how much he wanted to win this game for the BBN.

“What a bad night. Just devastating. It was just the worst, the worst ever. To do it in that venue wearing this jersey, it’s devastating.” Pope said.

The hope is that this loss will help Kentucky will learn from this performance and use it as fuel to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“There’s nothing you can do with it but help dig in and help it make you better, right?” Pope stated. “And in long conversations with our guys and our staff and digging into the numbers, the nuts and bolts, it’s also exciting to grow and get better and to move forward.”

Once again, this is a message that just shows that Coach Pope gets what this program means to the Bluegrass State.

Now, the Cats will turn their attention to a matchup with Brown on New Year’s Eve as they look to get back into the win column before the gauntlet of the SEC begins.

Who does conference play start with? None other than a top-10 team in the Florida Gators coming to Rupp Arena.

Going to be an interesting few weeks to see how Kentucky responds.