Earth-shaking transfer portal news: 'Bad for players, great for coaches, hell for personnel departments'

The NCAA has officially approved a single transfer portal window for the college football calendar, an earth-shaking change that will no doubt increase the level of insanity during that ten-day period, but confine it to that period alone.

This eliminates the spring transfer portal window, which has been both a boon and a bane for the Aggies over the last few years. The Ags have lost several players who came in during the winter window of a given year but decide to depart during the spring window of the same year— Micah Hudson being the most notable name.

The fallout from this move will be pretty far-reaching, however. There was already a near-universal sense that the portal windows that existed were incentivizing some short-sighted moves by certain players, and now that there's only one window a year, it will be even easier for bad actors to convince some players that they need to enter their names, even if such a move is inadvisable in the grand scheme of things.

NCAA officially limits transfer portal window to one ten-day period in winter

There is no word yet on what the timeframe is for the ten-day window. It had originally been set for January 2-11, but that date is not set in stone.

Clark Brooks of On3 had this to say on the latest news:

The "bad for players" is obvious: it restricts their freedom of movement and incentivizes rash decisions during the open entry period (even if it prevents emotional decision-making in the other 355 days of the year).

This move is good for coaches, though, because they don't have to do as much recruiting of their own roster in the period between the winter and spring windows. There had been a rash of coaches cancelling spring games due to concerns over players having big performances and hopping in the portal directly afterwards, which just shows how cutthroat things have gotten.

The comment about personnel departments is a good point as well— this move will make it much harder to properly anticipate and therefore address needs. If you have players making rash decisions to jump in the portal, it could blindside you at a position of need.

One thing is for sure: this first ten-day window will be the craziest we've yet seen.