Why Tulsa turned a 5-bedroom house with pool and mini golf into its transfer portal HQ
Tulsa wanted to think outside the box. It ended up moving into an amenity-filled Airbnb to have a place to host transfer recruits.
When transfer portal prospects arrived in Tulsa for hurried, 24-hour visits a year ago, Tre Lamb’s new staff ran the usual playbook.
Show them downtown. Take them out for a fancy steak dinner. Tulsa treated it similarly to official visits for high schoolers, just shorter.
But the feedback from players who did sign with Tulsa was clear.
“They were like, ‘Yeah, that wasn’t that important to me. I’ve done all that,’” Lamb said.
This year, Tulsa wanted something outside the box that gave portal prospects what they did want. It landed on what Lamb and his staff are calling the Portal House.
When the transfer portal opens on Friday, Tulsa will be headquartered in a five-bedroom house near campus that spans around 5,000 square feet. Lamb, offensive coordinator Brad Robbins, defensive coordinator Josh Reardon and general manager Mason Behiel plan to sleep there every night, and position coaches will come and go. The rest of the house will be HQ for the Golden Hurricane during the portal window — with plenty to entertain prospects as they come in and out of the city over a whirlwind two weeks.
The Tulsa Football Portal House 🏠
Film room. Recruiting ops. All-Access. All under one roof.
Coming Jan. 2‼️#TulsaPortalHouse pic.twitter.com/JBsy2fTEs9
— Tulsa Football (@TulsaFootball) December 29, 2025
It’s a unique approach aimed at building relationships as deep as possible in visits that usually last only 24 hours and doing so in a low-stress environment that feels more like a hangout than a job interview.
“We can really see their true colors. And we’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing us,” Lamb said. “For guys we’re paying money to, we can’t miss. We can’t afford to miss on character. We wanted something different that gave us a chance to know them and them a chance to know us in a short 24-hour window.”
Tulsa found the house on Airbnb and booked it for the portal window. It has 11 beds, a seven-hole mini-golf course in the backyard, a heated pool, a yoga studio, a karaoke room and game room as well a fire pit and grill outside. (It’s not the home used in Tulsa’s graphic announcing the Portal House on Monday.)
There will be pool tables, ping pong and Xboxes with EA Sports’ College Football 26 ready for players to showcase their skills. The games could help reveal a player’s competitive fire, but Lamb says a player’s skill in the video game can reveal his football IQ, too.
“We have an Xbox in our players’ lounge in our facility and we keep tally of wins and losses throughout the year,” Lamb said.
There will be offensive and defensive film rooms in the house. When prospects visit, coaches can boot up Tulsa’s film to show how prospects could be used in the Golden Hurricanes’ systems.