Ole Miss football will be looking to capitalize on what was one of the most successful seasons in program history. The Rebels walked away with their first 11-win season, finishing with a Peach Bowl victory over Penn State. Couple that with the work that Lane Kiffin and his staff did in the transfer portal, and there is bound to be a lot of hype coming out of Oxford, Mississippi, for the 2024 season.
The Rebels football team will be bringing in the No. 1 ranked transfer portal class, according to 247Sports. They lost 16 outgoing transfers but are bringing in the ninth-most commits of any team with 17 incoming. But it was more about quality over quantity for Ole Miss. Consisting of nine three-stars, seven four-stars, and one five-star, they seemingly reloaded in a year that could be the most challenging for any team in the SEC with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the conference.
For as much as Kiffin has had his issues with things like NIL and the transfer portal, he has conversely done well to use it to his advantage in his four seasons in Oxford. This is now the third year in a row that he has put together a top-2 transfer portal class, and with every class, the Rebels have continued to get better.
Ole Miss football made some obvious gains with this year's class, with highly rated players like Walter Nolen, Antwane Wells, and even Logan Diggs. But then there's guys like former South Alabama Jaguar Yam Banks who, even though highly rated himself, could have flown under the radar to many — but that also means he has the most to prove in comparison to those other players that came mostly from Power Five conferences.
Yam Banks transfers to Ole Miss football
Yam Banks comes in as a former two-star prospect, ranked as the No. 453 wide receiver and No. 68 player in the state of Mississippi in the class of 2020. But he entered the transfer portal out of South Alabama as a four-star and the No. 144 overall player and No. 8 safety.
What perhaps is one of the most important aspects with Banks' addition, as is with a lot of notable transfer commits, is that he has a lot of experience coming to play at Ole Miss. He has three full seasons under his belt, playing in 38 games (he played in just two games as a freshman). In that time, he accrued 91 solo tackles, 147 overall, 2.5 sacks, seven interceptions, three forced fumbles, 16 pass deflections, and one touchdown. The former two-time All-Sun Belt performer will have just one year of eligibility left.
Banks is joining an Ole Miss football defense that is being overhauled due to the transfer portal with some very notable additions from commitments such as defensive linemen Walter Nolen (Texas A&M), Tyler Baron (Tennessee), and Princely Umanmielen (Florida), linebacker Chris Paul Jr. (Arkansas), and defensive backs Louis Moore (Indiana), Key Lawrence (Oklahoma), and Tahveon Nicholson (Illinois).
Banks was ranked lower than any of his future teammates as a prospect but his experience and move to safety turned him into a four-star transfer. He'll have the most to prove because of not only his experience but his success that he gained in the Sun Belt, hoping his transferring into the highly competitive SEC will have a seamless transition.
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