DESTIN, Fla. — The major theme lingering over the SEC’s annual meetings this week is an air of uncertainty clouding the future of the sport. With the fate of the House v. NCAA case, the College Football Playoff format and the league’s football schedule in flux, there are plenty of complex and transformative issues.
Georgia football coach Kirby Smart made it clear, however, that there’s one issue of paramount importance to SEC 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 Tuesday.
Currently, there are two NCAA transfer portal windows, one in December at the end of the regular season (Dec. 9-28) and one in the spring (April 16-25).
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Coaches generally support a single transfer window, but issues including its timing, the impact of the academic calendar and the future of spring practices loom over the potential placement of that window. There is also concern that limiting transferring by going from two windows to one would end up being challenged legally.
Smart, the SEC’s second-longest-tenured coach, said there is a large and growing “contingency” of coaches who want a portal in April or May followed by OTA-style practices in June.
He said he doesn’t like that idea, however, as Georgia uses 10 days in June to hold camps that are key in recruiting and evaluating players. June has also become the busiest month for official visits on the calendar. Smart said 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 midyear 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 said anyone who thinks players wishing to transfer will willingly stay on a roster until April is showing naivete.
“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 pointed out that the NFL and other professional leagues have one free agency period — not two.
“It happens right after the season, before you start practicing,” Elko said, with a hint of sarcasm. “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.”
After Tuesday’s meetings, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said the consensus in his room was that his coaches would be in favor of a single January portal. That’s similar to a model favored by the American Football Coaches Association earlier this year.
He said the coaches found the notion of having the portal later in the spring semester “highly problematic.”
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 was that they’d prefer one window around the beginning of March or early April. That would still allow for some type of spring practice — or perhaps OTAs afterward — but limit transfer activity to the single window.
One of the drawbacks discussed at the Big Ten gathering was that even with just one January portal, two windows could still be needed. One driver for the Big Ten was the notion that the window shouldn’t open and close during the College Football Playoff.
Smart brought that issue up Tuesday. He said that when he complained about the portal being open during the CFP 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 could alter the trajectory of the sport, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea highlighted the different issues involving 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 [is] for some over-the-top consideration with setting these schedules and giving us the framework through which we build our team.”
There’s also uncertainty over which entity will end up making the decision. Smart indicated it could be the House Implementation Committee, which has been working on the issue. Clarity will likely have to come before July 1.
