The college football transfer season is officially moving to January.
NCAA Division I Cabinet Officially approved significant changes to the transfer portal process Tuesday will establish a single midseason transfer window for FBS and FCS players from Jan. 2 to Jan. 16, 2026, and eliminate the spring portal window in April.
What will this mean for coaches, players and roster management this offseason? Here's a breakdown of what's coming next.
What do coaches think of these changes?
While head coaches have wanted to see a one-stop shop in college football for years, not all of them agreed that January was the best answer for the sport.
Ohio State coach Ryan Day told reporters it “doesn't make any sense” that playoff teams would have to make roster decisions for next year while they're still competing for a national championship.
Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said most Big Ten coaches would like to move the portal window to April or May, citing the timing of revenue-sharing payments as another factor since Nebraska pays its players from July 1 to June 30.
“We're going to make sure players get paid by two different teams in the same year,” Rhule said. “It doesn't make any sense to me.”
SEC coaches came out in support of the January proposal, believing it would ultimately be more problematic to delay those roster changes until the spring. They need to prepare rosters and sign up new players in January for offseason workouts and spring training.
Several SEC coaches acknowledged that some of the final teams in the College Football Playoff may have a tough time, but for everyone else, it's the right change.
“I'm sorry, but no one cries on the boat,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said.
Why is college football moving to one portal window?
The NCAA transfer portal rules have changed almost every year since it was first created in 2018. For the 2024-25 season, college football players received a 20-day window to enter the portal in December and a 10-day window in April. Coaches have long argued that the negatives of the spring portal window outweigh the positives. College basketball has one window of portal into the offseason. The NFL has one big free agency period. Now college football does too. We saw contenders put together the final missing pieces for their upcoming season during the April portal window, and sometimes those last few needs don't become apparent until the team gets through spring training. Many players were able to earn big salaries in the last spring window simply because teams were desperate and wanted to spend money. These are just some of the positives.
Negatives? Coaches, general managers and NIL teams are tired of players signing contracts in December and then asking for more money in April. Now that players are allowed unlimited transfers, they will have a ton of leverage in the spring. Good players can always be offered more money by someone else, and replacing newcomers who left at the end of April is not easy. It's also worth noting that coaches took advantage of the spring window to get rid of underperforming players and free up more scholarships.
Niko Yamaleava drama in Tennessee earlier this year shed a brighter light on these issuesand it can happen anywhere. There will inevitably be many more disputes over zero compensation between players and schools this offseason, but the move to a single window of portal ideally means most of them will be resolved by the end of January.
Why does the window move from December to January?
In recent years, the transfer portal window has opened in early December, on the Monday following the conference championship games and bowl selections. The timing made sense from the point of view that players are ready to move on to their next school at the end of the regular season. They will have a few weeks to go through the recruiting process, take official visits and decide where they will enroll in January.
However, December is a brutal month for the coaching staff. They juggle roster retention and recruiting with a coaching carousel, high school signing day, practices and bowl games. Earlier this year, FBS coaches held their annual AFCA meeting in Charlotte and agreed it was time to move the portal season to January.
The main talking point at the time was the fact that some players were leaving College Football Playoff teams to focus on the transfer process. Texas Reserve Quarterback Malikoufi made that choice for the 2023 season, and Penn State Beautiful Pribula did the same in 2024. Some CFP teams have allowed players in the portal to remain with the team for the remainder of the season, but coaches generally agree that it's unfair for players to find themselves in such a predicament.
Can players enter the portal before January 2nd?
All FBS and FCS players, including graduate transfers, must wait until Jan. 2 to officially enter the transfer portal and begin contacting other schools. Grad transfers were previously allowed to enter the portal earlier, but will not be able to do so this offseason.
The exception continues to be players in programs that undergo early coaching changes. Players at UCLA, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State and Arkansas were given a 30-day window to enter the portal after their head coaches were fired in September. The Foreign Office also changed the rule earlier this week. Now, if a school fires its head coach before or after the January portal window, players will have a 15-day transfer window that opens five days after the school hires or announces its next head coach.
We are already seeing players deciding to redshirt and leave their teams with the intention of entering the transfer portal after the season. Their agents are already in contact with grandmasters of other schools, but players will not be able to communicate with coaches and visit schools until January.
However, we have seen a few unique cases that prove that players can bypass the portal and transfer to another school. Miami cornerback Xavier Lucas and Tulane quarterback Jake Retzlaff unsigned from their previous schools and joined new teams this offseason without officially entering their names into the portal. Players technically can't be recruited if they don't enter the portal during the window, but it will be interesting to see how many players still transfer after the January portal window closes and how they try to do so.
When do players on College Football Playoff teams transfer?
This year's College Football Playoff semifinals, the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl and Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, will be played on January 8 and 9, respectively. Players on the losing teams will still have time to make their moves before the portal closes on January 16th. But what about the teams still playing for the national title?
Following the CFP National Championship game on January 19, players from these final two teams will have the opportunity to enter the transfer portal on January 20-24. We did see some activity after the national title game last season, with six scholarship players from Notre Dame and four from Ohio State entering the portal after their seasons finally ended.
The FCS National Championship Game is scheduled for January 5th, so the timing of the January window will not be an issue for FCS players.
How many frauds will happen before January?
Short answer: an absurd amount.
Coaches may say they need a January portal window, but no one actually waits until January 2nd to start pushing for transfers. Now that these players are represented by agents, the reality is that recruiting processes begin with negotiations between agents and general managers throughout the season.
Last year, as schools prepared for the first year of college athletics revenue sharing and general managers began to take the lead in contract negotiations, the relationship between an agent and a general manager became critical. Agents were already canvassing their clients in November. GMs re-signed their returning players in the final weeks of the regular season before the portal opened. In many cases, by the time players were officially in the portal, they already had a good idea of where they were going.
While these programs were already operating without fear of NCAA enforcement regarding tampering, they are now turning to an agent to convince players they hope to add through the portal. One interesting element of the upcoming portal cycle to keep an eye on is: Will we see more players signing with schools they never attended? Many of these recruitments will likely be completed well before the January 2 deadline.
Will fewer players transfer this offseason?
The total number of offseason transfers has increased each year, a trend that has been unable to be reversed since the NCAA had to waive the one-time transfer rule last year. During the 2024-25 school year, more than 4,900 FBS players and more than 3,200 FCS players entered their names into the transfer portal.
Transfer windows were open for a total of 60 days when they debuted in the 2022/23 season and have been cut to 45 days in 2023/24, then to 30 last year and now to 15. If the cancellation of the spring transfer window does result in fewer players transferring this off-season, coaches and administrators will consider it a major win. But it is important to note what role income distribution will also play.
Power 4 programs investing $10-15 million (or much more) into their rosters have the means to bring back players they don't want to lose. Players can now also sign multi-year agreements with schools. These agreements are not binding and do not prevent players from transferring, but schools hope the commitments they make to these players will help retain them.
Will these changes lead to more lawsuits?
Yes. Attorney Tom Mars predicted that “experienced antitrust lawyers will be at the courthouse before the sun comes up” if the NCAA moves forward with adopting a 15-day January window and eliminating the spring transfer window, arguing that these reforms would have anti-competitive consequences that restrict player mobility and cannot be justified when less restrictive ones exist alternatives.
Preliminary injunctions from federal courts ended the lump sum transfer rule and forced the NCAA to cease investigations into collective bargaining and third-party net-zero deals. The NCAA is currently facing several eligibility lawsuits. The NCAA and conference commissioners have lobbied Congress for years and hope the SCORE Act could provide antitrust protections if it passes. However, at this point it is safe to say that we will see legal challenges regarding the new transfer rules in the coming months.
