Two is not always greater than one.
Just ask Southeastern Conference football coaches this week at the league’s spring meetings in Destin, Florida, about the NCAA transfer portal. There were two portal windows again this past school year, with the first running from Dec. 9-28 and the second from April 16-25.
“I always lend to the professional models and what they seem to look like,” Texas A&M’s Mike Elko said. “It certainly seems like free agency happens once and not twice, and it happens right after the season and before you start practicing. That seems to be the landscape for every single professional league across the world.
“Why we believe that shouldn’t be how this works is hard to get your head wrapped around.”
The 2024-25 portal schedule was actually abbreviated from 2023-24, when the winter window was Dec. 4 to Jan. 2 and the spring window April 15-30, but it was still problematic for SEC coaches.