It’s no secret that the NCAA calendar has created a situation in which players, coaches and anybody who covers college football is one step away from a complete breakdown of being overworked in December. Postseason college football, the Early Signing Period, the transfer portal, schedule reveals, awards and the coaching carousel make this an insane month.
Some of it is understandably unavoidable. With an expanded playoff, postseason play has to begin in December. Coaches are also naturally going to be fired and hired after the regular season, which ends at the end of November. Awards will also come at the end of the regular season.
Other parts, though, make no sense. The NCAA doesn’t have to have the early signing period, and leagues don’t need schedule reveals, during this time. There’s no extra statement needed on those. They need to change immediately, and they are recent changes themselves anyway.
What’s murkier, though, is the transfer portal. The NCAA has a winter, spring and summer window for the portal, and they try to do it after schools have ended their semesters to allow the athletes time to make their decisions, which is naturally why it would fall in December as well. This year’s transfer window goes from Dec. 9 to Dec. 28.
The newly expanded College Football Playoff complicates that.
Look, it’s one thing for players to transfer out when the team is preparing for a meaningless bowl game. Unless it’s the CFP, you probably don’t want those players for the bowl anyway. After all, nowadays, because of the nature of the CFP, the bowl is nothing more than a preseason matchup for the next year.
Given this window, though, players are now faced with a choice: Avoid transferring in the most effective window to get acclimated to a new team, or abandon your current team with championship aspirations. After all, while the first round of CFP games is next weekend, the next three rounds are all after the window closes.
Such is the case with UT.
It’s one thing if Khalifa Keith, Vysen Lang, Nathan Leacock or Nate Spillman enter the portal. None of them were going to be used in the CFP. However, the Vols easily could have benefitted from Chas Nimrod, Kaleb Webb and Cameron Seldon. All three of them have been contributors in somewhat backup roles this year.
Nimrod has 10 catches for 121 yards. Webb has six catches for 48 yards. Seldon has 23 carries for 118 yards and a touchdown to go along with three kickoff returns for 77 yards. None of this is irreplaceable, but it’s valuable enough that the Vols could feel their departures in the CFP.
At the same time, who could blame them transferring? Given those numbers, they were all obviously going to remain buried in the depth chart at Tennessee, so it makes sense for them to look elsewhere, and again, the winter window is the most effective time to find the right place.
Such is the conundrum for the NCAA. So what must they do?
Well, honestly, I don’t have an answer for the perfect accommodating calendar, but the best move is to open the window after the season ends Monday, Jan. 20. Now, of course, the second semester starts for many schools during that time, but if you change the calendar to open the window from January to February of the following year, the schools will accommodate.
For instance, the school may not require newcomers to attend spring classes. Or they could have a semester track within a semester track that starts in February and goes through June. They could just simply not start classes until February for everybody to begin with.
There are plenty of routes to take here, and believe me, for the football players, they’ll take them.
As a result, the NCAA needs to go ahead and force the schools to cave to them. Sure, they’re student athletes, but the new calendar puts an unfair choice in front of players. They shouldn’t have to choose between finding the right home and helping their team win a championship.
