Kirby Smart reveals exactly when coaches and players want the Transfer Portal to open at SEC Spring Meetings
Kirby Smart is becoming the voice of college football at just the right time. Fans just need to hope that the powers that be actually listen.SEC Spring Meetings are this week, and as Kirby Smart took the stage on Tuesday he was asked about the Transfer Portal window. This hot button issue has been an […]
Kirby Smart is becoming the voice of college football at just the right time. Fans just need to hope that the powers that be actually listen.
SEC Spring Meetings are this week, and as Kirby Smart took the stage on Tuesday he was asked about the Transfer Portal window. This hot button issue has been an absolute mess since college football switched to a two-window system with both December and spring windows in which players can enter the Transfer Portal.
Coach Smart apparently (and rightfully) thinks that is a huge issue to address–even if it can't be tackled this week at the SEC Spring Meetings.
"Everybody in this room is [focused on] eight or nine [conference games], SEC Championship game or not, or [revenue sharing settlement. The biggest decision that has to be made in college football right now, by far to me, by far, is when is the Transfer Portal window and is there one or two. That's not being decided by us today. A lot of people don't even know how it's getting decided. Who's deciding it?"
Kirby Smart and several other coaches have made it clear both this week at the SEC meetings and throughout this offseason that the current setup of the Transfer Portal is completely untenable. Fans are getting absolutely fed up with it as well seeing as it's nearly impossible to track which players are even on rosters at this point.
Kirby continued, talking through just how unanimously coaches hate the current state of the portal, and how tough it is to play meaningful football games while also fighting through the Transfer Portal window in December:
"We had an [American Football Coaches Association] meeting in which we unanimously decided that there needed to be one Transfer Portal window. And it needs to happen sometime in January. There is an outcry, there are schools and conferences that feel like it should not fall during the play of the season. I would love to be able to play the season without it…It's not fun. It's really hard to be playing in a championship setting and have to deal with that. But when I brought that up as a complaint or a problem it was told to me, 'There's no crying from the yacht.' So if you're going to play in these environments you have to be willing to do that."
Obviously playing games while also fighting the portal isn't ideal, but what coach Smart and other coaches realize is that's just part of the game now. College basketball is the same way as the window opens amidst the most important tournament in sports (March Madness). The College Football Playoff is now going to extend far too long into December and January for there to simply be zero overlap with the season and the Transfer Portal.
However, Kirby Smart did reveal where he, coaches, and players all agree that the portal (with one window) should be, even if it is going to happen when games are going on:
"It's really important to have your team in whatever date in January–whenever we decide that is…you do all this preparation [after that] and then that's your team. I'm great with the money they make. I'm great with them being able to go in the Transfer Portal. But if you ask kids when they would like to be able to go in the portal they're going to say in January so they can go get started at their new place."
January is the only Transfer Portal timing that makes sense for all parties involved in the current state of college football.
Well over 90% of the sport has completed their football season by January with the exception of playoff teams in the quarterfinals and beyond, so many teams can focus purely on roster management and offseason activities. The high school recruiting is primarily finished by January as the early signing day has concluded the month prior. Players interested in entering the Transfer Portal will still have time to gain academic acceptance and a smooth transition to their new program ahead of spring football activities. Coaches can actually know what their teams are going to look like from a roster standpoint entering the bulk of spring workouts.
Every single party involved benefits from having the one and only portal window happen in January. Kirby Smart just gave the answer to what most every coach, player, and fan wants. Let's just hope that college football decision makers can get their act together and make that happen soon.
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If you want to see more on the Transfer Portal and the full SEC Spring Meetings press conference with Kirby Smart you can find that in the video below.
