Lane Kiffin has had a great recruiting season in the transfer portal. He has landed many of the top players and Ole Miss is looking like a real powerhouse in the SEC. However, Kiffin is not a fan of the calendar and how transfer portal season falls. He slammed the calendar in a recent press conference.
Lane Kiffin on the Transfer Portal, College Football calendar:
"It’s a terrible system… I wouldn’t think any other sports have ever set up a system where free agency starts while the season is still going." https://t.co/g6BZFVSe8n pic.twitter.com/hIRTrj92BZ
— On3 (@On3sports) December 27, 2023
Lane Kiffin Slams Transfer Portal Recruiting Calendar
Players have to decide whether they are entering the portal before the season is over. This leads to many players not being eligible to play in bowl games because they have officially left the program. Kiffin slammed the system and pointed out the challenges.
“So, again, it’s a terrible system. No other—I wouldn’t think any other sports, professional sports, have ever set up a system where free agency starts while the season is still going,” Kiffin added. “So it really makes no sense. You can leave, you can stay, you can go other places, coaches can call you and our season is still going.”
“It would be like before the NFC or AFC playoffs start in a couple weeks, all of a sudden, hey, free agency the week before opens,” he said. “So you can start recruiting other people’s players and fly them on trips and get them to transfer. So really, in a really bad system.”
Kiffin is echoing what many have an issue with. As teams are trying to prepare for their final games, they are having to try and recruit players while also dealing with the loss of players.
New System For A New Era
In the previous era, this probably worked out just fine. The portal wasn’t the hotbed of activity like it is today. Now with transferring becoming easier than ever, programs have to take the portal seriously or risk being left behind. The new system is still working out all of the kinks and I expect that we will see some changes in the coming years. Even simply delaying the transfer portal season a month would make a huge improvement.
It would be one thing if a coach who struggles in the portal said this. Lane Kiffin has dominated the transfer portal and yet he wants to see a change. Will college football make a change in the coming years?