College sports continue to rapidly change, with coaches and administrators looking to stabilize the sport. Now, former head coach Mack Brown feels he has a solution to at least the chaos of the Transfer Portal. That’s cutting it down to one window in the winter.
As of now, there are two windows for football players to enter the Transfer Portal. One comes in December, following the regular season. The other is following spring practice. Brown, as he explained on See Ball Get Ball, thinks keeping that to just the winter, and adjusting the schedule is key for college football.
“Right now, I would move the Playoff back as far as I could, and I would have one window,” Mack Brown said. “And I would have it in January, and I would try to have it after the national championship game, and before school starts the next two or three weeks. Then, you have your team for the spring.”
The Transfer Portal windows have already been cut down significantly in how long they’re open. Coaches haven’t been done there, though, and many have advocated for further changes, including going down to one window. Others have advocated for an April-only window. Regardless, most want some kind of change.
The challenge of the spring window, in Mack Brown’s mind, is highlighted by the current situation at Cal. The Golden Bears saw their roster get raided this offseason, including some massive losses to the running back room in the spring. That group of outgoing backs included star Jadyn Ott.
“Cal, I was told, lost five running backs after spring practice. How do you lose five running backs and replace them? You can’t,” Brown said. “So, we don’t need people tampering with guys all spring. We don’t need guys out in spring practice that are thinking about leaving. And we don’t need coaches that are coaching kids that aren’t gonna be there.”
The winter calendar has largely been discussed as being chaotic. Between high school recruiting, bowl prep, the College Football Playoff, and the Transfer Portal, things can be chaotic. Mack Brown knows this, which is why he’d address that by rearranging the schedule as much as possible. That could go so far as to even cut back on the number of games played so that players can make their transfer decisions while keeping in line with academic calendars.
“So, let’s go through our season. Let’s do the best we can do. Probably gonna have to cut back on some games during the Fall or move them back a little bit,” Brown said. “But let’s try to get the season over where we have a window where you can still transfer if you want to, because the top kids know where they’re going anyway. They’ve got agents now. I don’t think they even call it tampering anymore because usually when the kid said, ‘I’m in the portal, but listen, I don’t want any contact.’ Well, yeah, he knows where he’s going.”
The House Settlement, which was recently approved by the judge overseeing the case, is going to be the next major change to college sports. Seeing how that impacts the Transfer Portal will probably need to come first, at least for a short period, before any major changes like removing a window are made.
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