PFB Lands Tyler Waldrep From Transfer Portal

The football transfer portal opened on Wednesday, but PFB got a pickup at the start of the week worth writing about.

We’re happy to welcome Tyler Waldrep to the squad. Tyler most recently wrote for the Tulsa World, but he was laid off a few weeks back in the midst of some budget cuts (the sports writing industry isn’t always all the fun it’s cracked up to be). Tyler lives in Stillwater and will be a big help for me personally when it comes to in-person coverage.

A little get-to-know-ya:

Tyler went to the University of Alabama from 2013 to 2018 and has been a beat reporter for the Crimson Tide, Florida State and later Jax State.

His favorite sporting event he covered was the 2018 national championship game (2017 season) — the one where Tua Tagovailoa came off the bench in the second half to help lead Alabama to the win. Some of his other favorite moments include the 2017 national championship game (2016 season), a pair of Deontay Wilder heavyweight title defenses and Jax State’s 2023 New Orleans Bowl win (the Gamecocks’ first bowl win).

In his year and some change of covering Oklahoma State, his favorite in-person moment was covering the Cowgirl basketball team erasing a 15-point deficit to come back and beat No. 9 TCU in Gallagher-Iba Arena.

When he isn’t working, Tyler enjoys board games and is a movie buff. As someone who doesn’t play a ton of board games or go to the movies enough, I’ll let him explain the interests:

“Playing board games is easily my top hobby because it forces people to spend time together without screens which I spend enough time on for work. My favorite is a murder mystery game that plays similarly to the show ‘The Traitors’ (sadly without the cash prizes) or the video game ‘Among Us.’

“I also enjoy watching movies at the AMC. I’ve seen 14 new releases this year already. ‘Novocaine’ tops the 2025 list by a lot, but ‘The Amateur’ (currently playing) is second best so far and deserves a seven-out-of-10.
I don’t play a lot of video games, but I do play them regularly. ‘College Football 25,’ ‘Overwatch’ and ‘Marvel Rivals’ are all current favorites.”

Tyler is still relatively new to this oddly shaped state of ours, but his favorite things about Oklahoma to this point include the people, the lack of humidity (compared to Alabama) and Braum’s. He dislikes how big the spiders are, winter and the wind.

So welcome Tyler aboard. He’s already gotten rolling with us, writing Gundy’s announcement of the spring game being an actual game, what Steve Lutz said about new signee Ben Ahmed and more.