Just when you thought college football couldn’t possibly get any crazier, Dae’Quan Wright is about to make history.
Wright went through the NFL Draft process, signed with an NFL team, spent time in NFL training camp and was on the Cleveland Browns’ roster.
Now he’s potentially going back to college.
The Browns waived Wright on Sunday, and if he clears NFL waivers, the former Ole Miss tight end has an agreement in place to join Lane Kiffin at LSU for the 2026 season.
Yes, you read that correctly.
An NFL player is going back to college football.
Wright is believed to be the first player to return to college football after spending time with an NFL team, making this one of the strangest and most historic eligibility situations the sport has ever seen.
And the story of how we got here is somehow even crazier.
Wright played at Virginia Tech before transferring to Ole Miss, where he played under Kiffin. After finishing his college career, he entered the NFL and eventually landed with Cleveland.
Under basically everything we’ve understood about college athletics forever, that should have been it.
Once you went professional, your college career was over.
Not anymore, apparently.
Wright was one of a group of former college athletes who filed a lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s eligibility rules. A Louisiana court granted a temporary restraining order allowing the athletes another opportunity to compete in college, including Wright and other players who had already signed NFL contracts.
Wright then entered the transfer portal while he was still with Cleveland, reportedly becoming the first active NFL player to enter the NCAA transfer portal.
Think about how ridiculous that sentence would have sounded five years ago.
An NFL player.
In the college football transfer portal.
Now he’s being waived by the Browns and could immediately become another weapon for LSU.
Wright isn’t just some random camp body, either. The 6-foot-4, 246-pound tight end is coming off a season at Ole Miss in which he caught 39 passes for 635 yards and five touchdowns.
So Lane Kiffin could potentially add an NFL-caliber tight end to his roster right before the college football season begins.
That’s insane.
There are still hurdles. Wright must clear NFL waivers, and questions remain surrounding SEC transfer rules and exactly how this unprecedented eligibility situation will ultimately be handled.
But regardless of what happens next, we’ve already crossed into completely new territory.
For decades, the path was simple:
High school → college → NFL.
There was no going backward.
Now a player can apparently go from college, sign an NFL contract, enter an NFL facility, participate in training camp, get waived and potentially show up on an SEC roster weeks later.
College football has changed dramatically because of NIL, the transfer portal and constant legal challenges to NCAA rules.
But this might be the wildest example yet.
Dae’Quan Wright isn’t just transferring schools. He’s potentially transferring from the NFL back to college football.
If that doesn’t show how completely different this sport has become, nothing will.
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