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NORMAN, Okla. — All of it — the 5,626 passing yards at Alabama, the halftime benching in a national title game, the depth-chart demotion and last December’s come-and-save the Crimson Tide crisis — dissolved into the evening shadows as Jalen Hurts trotted out to start another college football season.
Alabama had already played its season opener, and won. Hurts, the quarterback who was 26-2 as a starter there, was now, for a single season, an Oklahoma Sooner.
So it is across the country: Graduate transfers are lining up at new universities to take more snaps, and coaches are taking them up on it, seizing talents they know they will have for only a season or two.