Football Transfer Portal Chaos Continues Despite New Rules

On Dec. 30, the football transfer portal was still a few days from opening. But the head of a power conference school’s NIL collective was already pacing outside in his backyard, taking nonstop calls about an ever-changing football roster. “I’m on the phone almost every minute of the day and into the midnight hour of the night—abandoning our families and friends,” the collective’s head said. Another collective head said they had close to 100 unread text messages by 11 a.m. one morning this week.

A shorter transfer portal window and new restrictions on athlete pay, thanks to the House v. NCAA settlement, were billed as ways to calm the chaotic football transfer portal—the notification system college athletes use to declare their intention to leave for a new program. 

But this year, the portal window is expected to be as wild as ever—and the price tags have never been higher.

Agents have been sending “grocery lists” of players planning to hit the portal Friday to NIL collective heads, the second head said. Already, more than two dozen quarterbacks reportedly plan to hit the portal, and the collective heads told Front Office Sports that players on teams still competing in the Playoff are on these lists, too. The coaching carousel has contributed, too, with players following their coaches out the door.

In many cases, schools are putting together football rosters that cost well over $20 million—including a combination of rev-share and guaranteed NIL opportunities for players. That second collective head noted the compensation packages include name, image, and likeness deals offering cars and luxury apartment rentals worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Shrinking Windows

This past fall, the NCAA implemented a few changes to the transfer portal window. Last year, there were two windows for football. The first opened in December, running from Dec. 9–28, and the second ran from April 16–25. But this year, there’s only one window: Jan. 2–16.

The elimination of the spring portal window will undoubtedly ease the burden come April. But coaches have continued to lament having to re-recruit their entire rosters, as players can still transfer as many times as they want without penalty. 

And the timing still causes major issues.

The second collective head told FOS they actually preferred the December timing, given that it lined up with the academic calendar. Now, players who enter the portal will be arriving at their new schools mid-semester, causing a host of logistical problems. 

The first head, on the other hand, said the January portal window still wasn’t moved far enough to accommodate Playoff programs. “If you’re in a Playoff—God knows what they’re doing,” they said. “The better your team is, the bigger chance you have to lose in the portal unless you have a robust infrastructure.” 

The portal window also incentivized coaches to abandon ship before their seasons ended. Before the CFP even began, Tulane, JMU, and Ole Miss all learned their head coaches would be departing (or, in the case of Ole Miss, already had). That also impacts players, who in many cases follow coaches to new campuses. (The NCAA also revised a rule allowing players to transfer after their coach leaves, shortening the window from 30 days to 15 and making them wait until a new coach has been hired.)

Ballooning Budgets

The House v. NCAA settlement was supposed to create new guardrails for athlete compensation. It allows all Division I schools to pay up to $20.5 million to players in revenue-sharing across the athletic department and requires third-party NIL deals to be scrutinized to ensure they aren’t “pay-for-play” in disguise. 

The revenue-sharing only raised the floor for athlete compensation, as the new College Sports Commission lacks the power to enforce rules regarding pay-for-play NIL deals. Schools can bring players third-party NIL deals beyond the revenue-sharing cap. To do that, schools and collectives can source legitimate deals for players, from endorsements to event appearances, as if they were agents themselves—and schools can add that as part of the overall compensation package.

“The idea that the House settlement was going to help this space was absolutely asinine,” the first collective head said.

For power conference football rosters, the magic number is $25 million, according to the two heads—though one described the number as the bare minimum, with some programs reaching $35 million, and the other said it’s what it could take to be successful in the postseason. (Some of the top quarterbacks in the portal are reportedly asking for as much as $4 million to $5 million this year.)

Some schools are attempting to include buyout clauses or damages if players decide to leave before their contracts expire. But because of the volatility of the portal, the vast majority of deals continue to just be one-year contracts. After all, they expect to have to do this all again next year.