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Tulane transfer kicker Patrick Durkin signs with Florida Gators

On3 imageby: Keith Niebuhr01/06/26NiebuhrOn3

The Florida Gators are replacing one standout placekicker with another. With Trey Smack’s eligibility up, UF has landed Patrick Durkin, a rising redshirt sophomore from Tulane. And he is very good.

He signed with Florida on Tuesday.

Durkin started for the Green Wave in 2025 as a redshirt freshman and was both the American Conference Special Teams Player of the Year and a First-Team Freshman All-American by The Athletic. He made 25 of 28 field goal attempts (long of 52 yards) and ranked No. 12 nationally in field goal percentage (.893). Durkin also connected on 41 of 42 point-after-touchdown attempts.

Patrick Durkin was a record-setter at Tulane

All told, he made four field goals beyond 50 yards. Two of his three misses on the season were from 50-plus. Durkin’s 24 made field goals last year are the most in Tulane history. Meanwhile, his 112 points led the conference and set the record for a Green Wave kicker. On kickoffs, 66 of 77 were touchbacks.

Durkin was 2 of 4 on field goals and 16-16 on PATS in 2024, when he earned a redshirt.

Patrick Durkin, of course, played for first-year Gators coach Jon Sumrall the past two seasons at Tulane. With the Wave, he was coached by Johnathan Galante, UF’s new special teams coach. In 2025, Galante was named a nominee for the 30th annual Broyles Award, which goes annually to college football’s top assistant. It’s named after Frank Broyles, once a UF assistant.

Galante just completed his first season with Tulane after three years at Marshall. Before that, he was a special teams analyst at Alabama (2019-2022) and special teams graduate assistant at Virginia Tech (2017-2018). 

Transfer portal background information

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II, and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The portal window is from Jan. 2-16.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database, and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request, and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The database is a normal database, sortable by a variety of topics, including (of course) sport and name. A player’s individual entry includes basic details such as contact info, whether the player was on scholarship, and whether the player is transferring as a graduate student.

A player can ask that a “do not contact” tag be placed on the report. In those instances, the players don’t want to be contacted by schools unless they’ve initiated the communication.

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