A new window: ‘It’s going to be like NBA free agency’
If you’ve had trouble keeping track of all the changes to the college football calendar, you’re not alone. Since the transfer portal introduced windows in 2022, they have changed every year.
This year,
there’s only one transfer portal window, not two, and it’s only 15 days. It opens on Friday, Jan. 2 and closes on Friday, Jan. 16, and it applies to all FBS and FCS players, regardless of their classification or graduation status.
The only exception to the window will be for those players who play in the national championship game — they get a five-day window that begins on Jan. 20 — or any players at schools that make a coaching change after the window closes. Those players get a 15-day portal window that begins after their new coach is hired.
Players are free to take as long as they need to pick a destination as long as they enter their names within the window, though there will be a time crunch for players who want to enroll at their new school in time for the spring semester.
There is no spring transfer window, as there has been for the last three offseasons. Players can still transfer outside the portal windows as a normal student would, but aren’t technically allowed to have recruiting contact with other schools unless they have entered their names into the portal.
That hasn’t really slowed down the activity in December, though. As players declared their intent to enter the portal — either publicly or privately — and agents shopped their clients, plenty of action has occurred outside of official channels. The last few weeks have amounted to a built-in tampering period, and several general managers said they expect commitment announcements to come as early as Friday, in the hours after the portal opens.
“A lot of it is already done,” one Power 4 GM said recently. “It’s going to be like NBA free agency, where on Day 1, you see a ton of commitments.”