The uptick in coaching changes and transfer portal activity has led some officials to propose changing the current National Signing Day model
The chaos will end, at least for some.
With the start of the early signing period Wednesday, thousands of high school football prospects will be able to sign with their school of choice over 72 hours, ending a years-long slog of phone calls, text messages and campus visits with a simple signature.
But this year’s early signing period may be the last one of its kind. College leaders are exploring significant alterations to the football recruiting calendar that would, among other moves, change the date of the early signing period or abolish it completely.
Todd Berry, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, told Sports Illustrated he recently presented a proposal to conference commissioners outlining the overhaul. The preliminary proposal has yet to be vetted and has not been formally introduced to the NCAA Football Oversight Committee (which will likely scrutinize and suggest changes), but administrators on NCAA rules-making committees believe change is inevitable. One describes the early signing period situation as “untenable” and another says the recruiting calendar is “archaic.”
“The current model is completely broken,” Berry says. “The idea of keeping the current model is ludicrous.”
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The potential changes are in response to the expedited coaching hiring-and-firing process and overflowing transfer portal. Berry’s proposal would move the early signing date to January, providing first-year coaches more time to amass their signing classes and evaluate their rosters in light of the increasing number of players entering the portal. The proposal would also create an additional dead period during conference championship week, usually held the first week of December.
The signing day issue is part of a larger holistic evaluation of the football calendar, much of it inspired by the altering landscape in college athletics, says Shane Lyons, the West Virginia athletic director and chair of the NCAA Division I Council. Officials are exploring a litany of changes:
- Moving the COVID-inspired one-on-one on-campus evaluations with recruits from the summer to March.
- Evaluating what’s allowable during spring practice, including the number of contact days.
- Reinstating another COVID-inspired addition, the NFL-like organized team activities (OTA) that teams held in late July 2020.
- Expanding the regular season to make Week Zero permanent, thus moving back the start of preseason camp.
Berry plans to introduce the proposal in January at the American Football Coaches of America Convention and then later that month at the NCAA Convention in Indianapolis. He hopes to have a new early signing period by the time the 2021-22 cycle begins in August, but the proposal would need to jump through other hoops, including NCAA rules-making committees after acquiring the designation as “emergency legislation” and the Collegiate Commissioners Association, which controls the national letter of intent program.
The early signing date is chief among the issues to figure out. Officials created it to accommodate coaches, recruits and their families wishing to end the recruiting process. Why recruit a committed player for an extra two months? It wastes time and money, coaches said. The early period also avoids the chaos of January, which turned into a last-ditch effort for coaches to flip committed players.
The other issue is the Increasing pace of the coaching carousel. Before the early signing period’s implementation, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey cautioned the move would result in an accelerated firing cycle. “Lo and behold, here we are,” he told reporters last week. “If we change signing day again, will it eliminate this accelerating timeline? I’m not sure it will. We may have let the toothpaste out of the tube and it won’t go back.”
So far this cycle, 16 of the 28 coaching changes have happened before the end of the regular season. There were six coaches fired before Halloween, which is the most by that period in at least five years.
“There have been some unintended consequences with the early signing period,” Lyons says. “It’s been a good thing for these kids to commit early and sign. The bad part is it forces coaching changes earlier.”
While administrators attribute the expedited coaching carousel to the early signing period, Berry and several others point the finger toward the burgeoning transfer portal. With about 1,100 active FBS players in the portal, college football is well on its way to breaking a transfer record set last year. Experts believe a combination of two things has led to the uptick in transfers: the NCAA allowing players to transfer once and play immediately, and receive compensation for their name, image and likeness, which has expectedly evolved into a recruiting tool.
The movement of players and coaches makes it more difficult for programs to drag staffing searches deep into December, as the coaches need to be hired quickly to begin recruiting players and also mine the portal for additional talent.
“Your whole football team is out there [in the portal] for whoever wants to pay the most money,” Berry says. “We knew this was going to be a problem. This is a complete mess.”
The early signing period falls between the end of the regular season and the start of the second semester, a span that produces some of the most frantic portal movement. Over the past few days, several notable Power 5 starting quarterbacks have entered the portal, including Texas A&M’s Zach Calzada, Kedon Slovis of USC, Auburn QB Bo Nix and LSU’s Max Johnson.
“We’ve got a lot of coaches saving scholarships that could go to a high school player because they aren’t sure how their team is going to look,” Berry says. “When they go out (to recruit), they’re canceling home visits to fly back to their school to maintain their current team.”
The transfer portal is a contentious issue among those in the coaching ranks. Several have publicly described it as college football’s version of free agency. West Virginia coach Neal Brown, a member of the AFCA board of trustees, tells SI the portal should include closed and open periods, similar to professional leagues.
Berry has suggested the portal be open for a few weeks after the regular season, close again and then reopen for a few more weeks after spring practice is complete.
“It’s free agency. Admit it and identify what it is,” Brown says. “Just like in a professional model, there is a time period for free agency. There are windows for free agency.”
Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald, also on the AFCA board of trustees, says those players committing to a school out of the portal should have to sign a binding letter of intent. Currently, commitments from players in the portal are not binding.
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“There is a lot of room for improvement,” Fitzgerald says. “The easy thing was to create the portal. Nobody wanted to create the details.”
More than 70% of players who annually sign do so in December with the rest signing during the original period in February. Like many issues within NCAA membership, reaching consensus is a difficult endeavor. This one is made more complicated by the backdrop of uncertainty tied to NCAA Division I transformation.
“Clearly things have changed since the early signing period was put in. The transfer portal didn’t exist,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who chaired the NCAA Football Oversight Committee when the group recommended the early signing period change.
So what’s the answer in moving the early signing period? There is little appetite for moving it up earlier to June or August. For one, this could dramatically impact how a prospect competes during his senior season. Maybe seniors would begin opting out, one administrator suggested. Secondly, an August signing date would further accelerate a recruiting process that has been expedited over the years. For example, it’s now not so uncommon for programs to offer scholarships to eighth-graders.
Sankey posed a hypothetical: What if the early signing day were eliminated altogether?
“What was wrong with the first Wednesday in February?” he said last week. “You had flipping and you had decommitments. I got news for you, I don’t know if you’ve been watching Twitter the last 48 hours, but there are decommitments now.”
Fitzgerald sees the good in it. “A lot of kids want to be done with this process before the holidays. Where we’re at right now, the early period gives them that,” he says.
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