Potential landing spots for Beau Pribula after quarterback’s surprising departure from Penn State

Penn State backup quarterback Beau Pribula caused a stir in the college football world when he announced that he was departing Penn State before its College Football Playoff first-round game against SMU to enter the transfer portal. With Drew Allar returning to Happy Valley in 2025, Pribula is in search of a starting job and is willing to miss out on a potential national championship run to find it before all the roster spots and NIL dollars have dried up. 

While his decision is quite controversial and frustrating to Penn State fans and the team’s head coach, who called for the NCAA to institute a college football commissioner to help solve the problematic transfer portal timeline, it is almost certainly the best decision for his career. Just two days after the announcement, potential landing spots have begun to pop up for the athletic redshirt sophomore who will have two years of eligibility remaining in his new home. 

Here’s a look at a few potential portal destinations that have been floated by On3.com’s Pete Nakos, and a Penn State rival that could make plenty of sense for the now former Nittany Lion.

Offensively, the Hawkeyes took off in 2024 when former Northwestern QB Brendan Sullivan took over for Michigan transfer Cade McNamara. Sullivan’s added element of athleticism meshed well with new offensive coordinator Tim Lester, but Sullivan is now battling Jackson Stratton to start in the 2024 Music City Bowl against Missouri, which could open the door to additional QB competition through the portal. 

Pribula lacks extensive starting experience, but he’s an even more dynamic runner than Sullivan and can be an accurate thrower in the RPO game. Pribula is limited as a thrower, but Iowa isn’t looking for an offense that can score 40 points a game, just a dominant run game to control the ball and protect its defense, which Pribula can absolutely provide. 

The team on the other side of the 2024 Music City Bowl is another team to watch for Pribula this offseason. Brady Cook is out of eligibility and considering that Eli Drinkwitz was forced to play graduate student Drew Pyne when Cook went down with injuries this season, it’s clear there isn’t much depth in the QB room in Columbia. 

Drinkwitz landed the top QB from Pennsylvania in the 2025 recruiting class, Matt Zollers, so Pribula could be an excellent place-holder until Zollers is ready to take over to program. Though the two are very different styles of quarterback, Pribula, a dual-threat dart thrower, and Zollers a big-game hunter with an incredible deep ball, Drinkwitz is a creative enough offensive head coach to make each style of offense work as he brings along the youngster. 

UCF moved on from Gus Malzahn, who would have loved the dual-threat ability of Pribula, this offseason, but replaced him with Scott Frost who isn’t afraid to build an offense around a mobile QB either. In 2017, Frost’s best season in his first stint at UCF, McKenzie Milton threw for over 4,000 yards and ran for another 613. 

Pribula would thrive under Frost, who leans heavily on play-action and the RPO game, but will the PA native be willing to head down to Orlando? 

If Pribula prefers to stay a bit close to home, he may consider a trip down to Morgantown, where he began his final season at Penn State. The program also moved on from its head coach this offseason, ousting Neal Brown for another retread; bringing back Rich Rodriguez for Round 2. 

It’s been a while since Rich Rod had things rolling at WVU, but he won a Conference USA title at Jacksonville State this year with Tyler Huff, a 6-foot-1 quarterback who threw for 2,100 yards and ran for 1,300 with 14 rushing touchdowns. Huff got the ball out quickly, as Pribula likes to, and did nearly all of his damage as a designed runner, with just 179 of his 1,343 rushing yards coming on scrambles. 

There has been no reported connection, but Garrett Greene is out of eligibility, and Nicco Marchiol, who was the presumed heir-apparent, may not be the ideal fit for Rich Rod’s system.