Scottsdale, Arizona — College football coaches will suggest transfer windows in the late fall and spring to help manage the roster around the transfer portal.
Todd Berry, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, said Tuesday that his group wants two transfer windows for players to get their names into the gate: one from the last Sunday in November through the early signing date in mid-December, and the other from April 15 to May 1. Both windows will coincide with the contact periods in the enlistment. Players will not be required to transfer, only to enter the portal during the specified time periods.
The NCAA transfer portal, which debuted in October 2018, does not have specific windows for movement. The only deadline is that players must notify schools that they are entering the portal by May 1 of each school year. Perry noted that AFC members had proposed transfer windows before the gate went into effect, but they were not adopted.
“We knew there would be very few controls on it, but at least if we had a window the student-athletes would be able to go, ‘Is that a good decision? Because this is my competition. Now I know what the other competition is because we’re all in the window at the same time. “It might change some views. They have to be able to make informed decisions.
“We’re working on a window concept that I think would be very good for student-athletes, to give them those opportunities, to give the universities and their team and their colleagues a little bit more clarity about positions and employment and those things.”
Perry said setting up the current portal without windows created “disruption” and “chaos” with menu management. He believes the coaches’ proposal will likely be sent to the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee and the Division I Transformation Committee. A source on the Football Monitoring Committee told ESPN that transfer periods are “a foregone conclusion”.
Arizona coach Jade Fish said multiple transfer windows are important to helping athletes and coaches alike.
“There are two windows set in motion: after the season and after spring.” [practice], “ESPN’s Fish.” Let’s say they can make a decision after only one season, you’re assuming hiring won’t play a role. You have to see who they signed up for, what the enlistment class was like and then Spring Bowl, who came early. “I thought I was the second full-back but I’m really the fourth full-back.” Who left early?
“You have to give them that chance.”
Berry said the AFC also supports eliminating the maximum 25 coaches for initial scholarships allowed during each recruiting term, saying teams should be allowed to reach the 85 scholarship limit as per their schedule. Perry mentioned one school with at least 62 scholarship players, and “with all this chaos,” some teams have so many holes to fill their rosters, that there aren’t enough players in certain locations.
By keeping the number of annual official visits at 56, teams will be prevented from completely flipping their rosters.
“We need to lose [25 initial scholarships per year] We need to create some gate windows, and then we need to create a recruitment calendar that understands that some of it will be high school and some of it will be transitions. “And you have a couple of windows to go around to work around. And so it would take a reworking of the calendar, but we need to know if we can put the portal windows first.”