What we’re hearing from college football coaches about the calendar, eligibility and tampering

By Seth Emerson, Matt Baker and David Ubben

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — An FBS head coach whose team had a losing season made a jarring point on Tuesday: Maybe it was a good thing his team wasn’t bowl eligible. Playing a game, on top of dealing with the transfer portal and coaching carousel?

“The last three weeks were hell,” the coach said.

The word of the week at the annual American Football Coaches Association conference, which ended Tuesday, was “unsustainable.” The calendar under which college football operates — where the transfer portal opens and closes before the season ends — contributed to the drama surrounding Lane Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss to LSU and to both of Oregon’s coordinators preparing for a playoff game while simultaneously working as new head coaches elsewhere.

The Athletic spoke with more than 50 head coaches, assistants and agents over three days at AFCA. Everyone seems to view the current situation as bad for everyone, and almost anything is preferable.

A year after condensing transfer windows in December and April to a single one in January, there remains a desire to make other changes. Many coaches believe the College Football Playoff needs to be moved up, so the season ends earlier and there is less time between the regular season and the start of the playoff.

A person familiar with the discussions said the calendar was a subject during a Monday night meeting between a small group of about eight coaches, including one from each of the four power conferences. Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Illinois’ Bret Bielema, Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, SMU’s Rhett Lashlee, Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire and BYU’s Kalani Sitake were seen leaving the meeting, as was Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks, the chair of an FBS oversight committee on the calendar.

Brooks and other coaches declined comment after they left that meeting.

The coaches don’t make the decision. The conference commissioners and university presidents, in consultation with television executives, ultimately make the call. And any change would be for the 2027 season at the earliest. But coaches can have a say.

There is growing sentiment among coaches — though not full agreement — that the Playoff should start earlier, for several reasons. One would be less overlap between the season and the start of the transfer portal on Jan. 2. Not only teams in the Playoff, but teams in bowl games, are preparing for games while dealing with the portal, with many negotiations and discussions occurring well before the portal opens.

Lots of coaches are open to moving the portal window, and some are even OK with scrapping the modern version of spring practice for something more aligned with NFL’s OTAs (less contact, perhaps even later in the spring). But if the season moves earlier — with television networks’ blessing, of course — it would alleviate some of the current issues and help college football return to being a one-semester sport.

The biggest issue coaches want to avoid with any calendar changes is suiting up for practices with a roster they won’t have in the fall, which is something they did fix by eliminating the spring transfer window.

Another concern is whether the current Playoff format hurts teams that do the best in the regular season by giving them a long layoff. The teams to receive a first-round bye are now 1-7 in the first two years of the format, with Indiana the exception. There were other factors involved, especially the first year with the seeding format, but when Ohio State and Georgia lost as favorites this year, it reinforced concerns among coaches that the long layoff is a detriment.

FBS is the only level that has a layoff. The NCAA playoffs at the FCS, Division-II and Division-III levels start immediately after the end of the regular season, and while teams do get byes, it’s only one week off.

Montana head coach Bobby Hauck, whose program is a perennial playoff team, said he has been asked by FBS people about the logistics of longer playoffs. The FCS playoffs start right after the regular season — there are no conference championship games, and no extended byes. And their season wraps up before the new year begins.

“My personal opinion is this extending it well into two semesters, which is generated by TV, is difficult on teams just from a roster standpoint and everything else,” Hauck said.

One concern with moving the Playoff up is players taking final exams during games, one of the reasons there were historically long breaks between the season and bowls. But lower-level teams have been dealing with that for years.

“I can remember guys doing proctored exams on airplanes, getting finals at the hotel on the championship site,” Hauck said. “But academics have changed too. There’s remote learning. So I don’t know if that’s as huge a factor as it was at one point in time.”

Here’s what else we heard and learned from talking with coaches at AFCA:

Why 5-year eligibility wasn’t recommended

The 136 FBS coaches can’t agree on much, but the idea of recommending five years to play five years of football had overwhelming support.

Coaches dislike the uncertainty of knowing who on their own rosters will be eligible and pointed to players like Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss and Virginia’s Chandler Morris pursuing a sixth and seventh year of eligibility, pushing through denials, appeals and exploring legal avenues to continue their careers.

A policy nicknamed “five for five” would, on paper, simplify eligibility rules and eliminate the uncertainty. All players would have five years of eligibility, with a five-year window to use it.

“It’s a layup,” said one head coach in the days before around 60 coaches met on the final day of the convention.

Several coaches were hopeful the policy could be discussed, recommended and the debate could quickly move to the calendar.

But making a giant leap from the current eligibility policies — four years, but redshirt opportunities — produced concern, coaches were told, that the NCAA would make itself legally vulnerable in ongoing and future litigation.

NCAA president Charlie Baker addressed that this week with reporters at the NCAA convention in Indianapolis, saying the current rules — five years to play four — have held up in court 70 percent of the time.

“People start talking about five-for-five, six-for-six, seven-for-seven, it doesn’t matter if people aren’t going to comply with the rules,” Baker said, according to Yahoo. “Ninety-five percent of the membership complies.”

It could increase the odds that cases like Chambliss’ would fall in the player’s favor, setting a precedent for others who were not afforded the same five-year opportunities a possible window to pursue litigation against the NCAA.

Ultimately, that turned a layup into a compromise: The coaches recommended softening the redshirt rules, allowing players to appear in up to nine games (regular season or postseason) and use a redshirt, up from four.

That debate, however, left coaches furious that the most pressing issue in the sport – its calendar – was not discussed in the one time a year the coaches gather in the same room. There was some optimism coaches might reach a compromise and offer a recommendation to possibly move the season earlier, but the issue was never broached in the room.

Curt Cignetti and Indiana could complete one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history with a national championship win Monday against Miami. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)

What’s the lesson from Indiana’s turnaround?

Although there’s still somewhat of a shock factor in Indiana’s rise from historic doormat to No. 1, in the national championship game and on the cusp of a historic 16-0 season, coaches have also found some practical takeaways from head coach Curt Cignetti’s immediate, enormous success.

“I think it shows you that you don’t have to have a bunch of five-star guys to win,” a Power 4 assistant said. “There’s a saying in coaching: You don’t need the best guys, you need the right guys. So getting the right combination of guys, whether it’s height, weight, speed combination, mental makeup, their character, all those things.”

Plus experience, which was another commonly cited takeaway from coaches. In the Peach Bowl semifinal, the Hoosiers started more sixth-year players with extra eligibility from the 2020 COVID-19-affected season (five) than freshmen, sophomore and true juniors combined (four). Indiana’s staff prioritized proven production over potential in the transfer portal. Michigan similarly peaked with an older roster during its national championship run two years ago.

Staff continuity (coordinators Mike Shanahan and Bryant Haines are at their fourth program under Cignetti) is easy enough to understand from the outside, but several coaches raved about the intangible chemistry that somehow shows up on film. It’s a reflection of how much camaraderie, culture and buy-in still matter, even in the transfer portal/NIL era. As one high school assistant put it: “Make Kool-Aid, and get them to drink it.”

The state of tampering

Four years ago, every conversation with a coach at the convention broached the topic of tampering. They were furious, especially Group of 5 coaches who saw their rosters being picked over by larger schools luring players with NIL offers.

Now?

Tampering is a way of life. The issue is met with shrugs. It’s the way of the world now. Some coaches did complain after reporting particularly brazen cases of tampering, pushing for punishments and seeing nothing happen to offenders.

But most coaches don’t waste their time fighting it anymore. A much higher percentage of players have representation now, making the idea of tampering less necessary. Coaches can simply gauge a player’s interest through his agent.

The percentage of coaches who would try to argue they haven’t done what could be considered tampering is minimal, but generally, coaches are willing to shrug it off if opposing coaches go through avenues other than directly contacting players.

A loophole around agent certification?

Nearly everyone in college football agrees on the need for an agent certification process similar to the NFL, but with no players’ union or anything close to it, the process for certification looks far away.

Could there be a way to do it at the state level? Universities could push for legislation that requires any agents representing players to register with their respective state department of commerce.

It’s not a perfect system, coaches say, but it could raise the bar for entry and eliminate less-qualified agents, as well as establish some norms of operation, like a possible standard cut for agents representing players, which varies widely now.

For coaches frustrated with players who have poor representation, they see it as a possibility worth exploring.

Group of 5 retention

Coaches are, of course, incentivized to discourage players they don’t want to transfer from leaving their program. But multiple Group of 5 head coaches said they’re now tracking playing-time data of players who leave and using it to dissuade players from leaving.

The idea is simple: There is no NFL without tape to show scouts. And a move that might be worth between an extra $150,000-$300,000 now might end up costing a player in the long run if he doesn’t get on the field enough.

High school recruits are losing out

There’s a growing concern about revenue-sharing/NIL and the transfer portal squeezing out high school recruits. At the college level, one head coach said his review of the season concluded that too much money sat on the sidelines; that’s a byproduct of signing high school players who need time to develop. Another told high school coaches he wants to add more 23-year-olds (as Cignetti does) than prep recruits.

The result: fewer spots available at higher levels for traditional recruits, so high school coaches are pitching talented prospects to lower divisions than they would have a few years ago.

Oklahoma kicker Tate Sandell’s short shorts were a topic of conversation this week. (Bryan Terry / The Oklahoman / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

Goodbye, ‘Daisy Dukes’?

Love or hate Oklahoma’s Groza Award-winning kicker Tate Sandell’s infamous short shorts, they may be an endangered species.

“I’m not changing it,” Sandell said in November.

He may not have a choice after announcing his return to Oklahoma last weekend. The FBS rules committee spent a chunk of its two-hour meeting on Monday discussing uniform length, with Sandell’s shorts as a specific test case.