DESTIN, Fla. — The major theme lingering over the SEC’s annual meetings is an air of uncertainty hanging over the future of the sport. With the fate of the House case, the College Football Playoff format and the league’s football schedule in flux, there’s plenty of complex and transformative issues.
Georgia football coach Kirby Smart made it clear, however, there’s one issue of paramount important to the SEC’s football coaches — clarity on the future of the NCAA transfer portal.
“So, the biggest decision that has to be made across football right now, to me by far, is when is the portal window and is there one or two,” Smart said on Tuesday morning.
Right now, there’s two NCAA transfer portal windows, one in December at the end of the regular season (Dec. 9 to Dec. 28) and one post-spring (April 16 to 25).
Coaches are generally in support of a single window, but myriad issues from the timing of it to the impact of the academic calendar to the future of spring practices loom over the potential placement of that window. There’s also the concern of whether limiting transferring — by going from two windows to one — would end up being challenged legally.
Among SEC coaches, the topic resonated. Smart, who is the league’s second-longest tenured coach, said that there’s a “large contingency” of coaches that’s “growing” who want a portal in April or May and then to have OTA-style practices in June.
Smart does not like that idea, as he said Georgia uses 10 days in June to hold camps, which is a key in recruiting and evaluating. June has also become the biggest month for official visits on the calendar. He noted that having to practice at that time would be too much.
“Needless to say, I’m a proponent for a January, wherever it fits, window,” he said. “There’s people saying we can’t get our kids in academically. Well, they’re getting mid-year high school players in that same academic window. It’s happening everywhere. So, I’m a big believer in that, and I think that’s [the] decision that has to be made at least from a standpoint of SEC and bigger picture of the country. Where is the portal window? And is there two or is there one?”
Smart felt that there’s some naivete to anyone who thinks that players who want to transfer will willingly stay on a roster all the way until April.
“You think tampering is a problem?” he asked. “Put that [one] portal [window] in April and see what teams do in January, February, and March. Just think about it now because we’re getting ready to make a big decision, and a lot of people believe, well the kids won’t be able to leave if we put it in April. They’ll have to stay the next semester.
“Oh no, they’ll be on your campus getting tampered with it, collecting 33% of your cap before they leave.”
Texas A&M’s Mike Elko took a common-sense approach to the issue, pointing out that the NFL and other professional leagues have one period of free agency. Not two.
“It happens right after the season, before you start practicing,” he said, his voice giving of some sarcastic hints that come from his New Jersey roots. “That seems to be the landscape for every single professional league across the world. Why that wouldn’t be how this works [in this sport] is hard to wrap your head around.”
At Big Ten meetings last week, the coaches and athletic directors didn’t vote on a portal recommendation, according to sources. But the consensus leaving the room there was that they’d prefer one window sometime that would fall sometime around the beginning of March or early April. That would still allow for some type of spring practice — or perhaps OTAs after spring practice — but limit things to one window.
One of the drawbacks discussed at the Big Ten was that having one portal could lead to still needing to have two windows. One driver for the Big Ten was the notion that the window should not open and close during the College Football Playoff.
Smart brought that up Tuesday. He said when he complained about the portal being open during the College Football Playoff in the past he was told: “There’s no crying on the yacht.”
He added: “We had to deal with that multiple times. It’s not fun. It’s not fun. It’s really hard to be playing in a championship setting and having to deal with that.”
In a landscape that’s bracing for significant change that poses to change the trajectory of the sport, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea highlighted the different issues looming over the topic.
“I think if in a perfect world, the earlier the better,” Lea said. “I mean I think every coach would feel that way. The complexity comes with, again, you’re dealing with one sport within the context of college athletics and you’re dealing with academic calendars that vary from school to school, and you’re trying to create as competitive a product as you can with so many variables that that’s where I think the need for some over-the-top consideration with setting these schedules and giving us the framework through which we build our team.”
There’s uncertainty over what entity will end up making this decision. Smart indicated it could be the Implementation Committee, which has been working on the issue. Clarity on this will likely have to come before July 1.
