Every season, players and coaches enter the transfer portal or accept other jobs while their season is still going on. The biggest name in college coaching, Lane Kiffin, may end up being the person who makes the NCAA make a change.
Kiffin led Ole Miss to their best season in school history but was offered the head coaching job at LSU. Kiffin had a choice to make: stay at Ole Miss to finish with the Rebels in their first playoff appearance or leave for a top three head coaching gig in the college football landscape.
Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU and was not allowed to coach Ole Miss throughout the College Football Playoff. Without Kiffin, there is a great chance the Rebels are not the same team, especially on the offensive side of the ball.
Either the NCAA should move the end of the season to match the academic calendar, or have the season end on New Year’s Day and keep the portal open for one week. If teams are not in the championship game, they will be able to make staff changes and the teams that are still in have seven days to make their changes.
That is only half the equation. Players entering the transfer portal before the season is over should not be allowed. If you are on a team and there is one bowl game left then you should not be able to transfer until your team’s season is over. A fix would be playing bowl games for teams outside the CFP the following week after their regular season is over. When players are given weeks between games to be sitting around and thinking about leaving, they are prone to leave before the season is done.
Bowl season has also been a big talking point, especially about whether it is worth playing them when some rosters are without their top players. It is a valid question. Bowl games are essential to teams not in the playoffs and provide players with more reps and film for the NFL and gives other teams’ coaches more looks at them.
A prime example of the bowl game issue is last season when both Jake Dickert and John Mateer left WSU before their bowl game against Syracuse. Mateer was having a Heisman-level season but left for Oklahoma via transfer portal and the season was not over and he left. Dickert left in the middle of the night to go to Wake Forest, WSU was down their head coach and starting QB.
Overall, if there is going to be change, the NCAA has to implement two things. One is changing the schedule to go along with the academic calendar like former Alabama coach Nick Saban has mentioned. Another is to make players play in the bowl games, when players sit out. It ruins the whole point of what bowl games are meant for.
