The college football calendar is more chaotic than ever this December, with the transfer portal, postseason and end-of-semester classes all colliding at once. As teams prepare for the first round of the College Football Playoff this weekend, they are also trying to manage the constant turnover to their roster with some players opting to enter the transfer portal despite having a chance at a national championship. SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee voiced his frustration for how the portal currently operates, calling for an end to the December window.
«It’s terrible,» Lashlee said Tuesday. «I feel so awful for our kids and kids around the country. We talk about making a system that is all great for them, but we haven’t. That’s part of what’s part of your job as adults is to do what’s best for young people, not what they want, necessarily. They don’t want this. Yes, they want the ability to transfer and go where they want to go if they don’t like their situation. Yes, they want the ability to make money on their name, image and likeness. Neither one of those are bad things. There’s no other sport at all that has free agency in the season. It’s sad. It’s terrible.»
SMU backup quarterback Preston Stone is staying with the team while exploring transfer portal options. In contrast, Penn State backup quarterback Beau Pribula entered the portal and left the team just days before the Nittany Lions host SMU in the first round of the playoff on Saturday.
More than 1,500 players entered the portal during the first week of the winter window, which opened Dec. 9 and closes Saturday, Dec. 28. Even teams in the College Football Playoff are not immune to the record-setting pace of portal activity this cycle.
«You hear the story about their backup quarterback saying, ‘I don’t have a choice.’ That’s wrong,» Lashlee said. «That’s unacceptable. That’s not okay. He shouldn’t have to make that decision. Preston (Stone) here is doing the same thing, now he has chosen to stay with us and we’re working with him, but it’s still a juggling act for him — oh, and let’s not forget they’re in finals right now. So, yeah, the real easy thing is you don’t have a transfer portal (window) in December. That’s the real easy answer and it solves all the problems.»
A second transfer portal window is scheduled for the spring, running for 10 days from April 16 to April 25. Lashlee proposed consolidating the transfer activity into a single spring window and delaying practices until the portal closes, similar to how the NFL holds OTAs after the draft.
«Why in the world would we put kids in position where they have to decide do I transfer or play in the playoff?» Lashlee said. «Do I transfer or play my bowl game? Scholastically, it doesn’t make sense either, because your years end in May, not in December. We got to look long and hard at the schedule. Coaches have been saying this for the last three or four years with all these changes. What happens is we just make all these random changes because we don’t want to get sued or we don’t want to do this or we don’t want to do that. We don’t think about the long-term effects that it has on the young people that we’re supposed to be serving.
«I hate it. I hate it for our players. I told them that Monday. I hate that you guys get a chance to play in the College Football Playoff, yet you’re either forced to decide do I go in the portal or not, or, let’s call it like it is, people are bombarding our roster trying to pick people off our roster and we’re trying to focus on the playoff. It just goes on and on and on.»