Tate Martell is on the move again, and amazingly has two years of eligibility remaining.
Martell, the former blue-chip quarterback recruit who has played for two schools and been committed to at least two others, has now enrolled at UNLV. Martell’s father, Al, confirmed the news to 247 Sports.
The 5-foot-10, 205-pound Martell was a four-star recruit and rated the No. 2 dual-threat quarterback (behind Tua Tagovailoa) in the 2017 signing class out of Las Vegas private school powerhouse Bishop Gorman. He played one year at Ohio State before transferring to Miami, where he spent the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
All told, Martell has thrown 29 passes (completing 24) for 279 yards and one touchdown, while rushing for 129 yards and two scores in three college seasons. He backed up Dewayne Haskins at Ohio State as a true freshman in 2018, but transferred away after Urban Meyer’s sudden resignation at the end of the season (and also, perhaps not coincidentally, upon the arrival of Georgia transfer Justin Fields).
Martell landed at Miami, and was able to obtain an NCAA transfer waiver to make him immediately eligible to play for the Hurricanes. But he was third on the depth chart behind N’Kosi Perry and Jarren Williams in 2019 and appeared in just three games, completing his only pass attempt for 3 yards and rushing seven times for seven yards.
Houston transfer D’Eriq King arrived at Miami in 2020, and Martell opted out of the season, citing concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. Now 23, he entered the NCAA transfer portal in January.
Martell was a quarterback prodigy, verbally committing to Washington as an eighth-grader in 2012. He was featured on “60 Minutes” at age 14, and was one of the stars of the Netflix reality series “QB1: Beyond the Lights” in 2017 (the show also featured Fields, Jake Fromm and Spencer Rattler, among others, during its three-season run).
The 2016 USA Today High School Offensive Player of the Year and a 2017 U.S. Army All-American, Martell was also verbally committed to Texas A&M for a time before signing with Ohio State. His 247 Sports recruiting “timeline” contains 73 entries.
As a graduate transfer, Martell will be immediately eligible to play at UNLV this season. The Rebels went 0-6 under first-year head coach Marcus Arroyo during the COVID-abbreviated 2020 season.