College football’s messy calendar is still causing chaos. What’s the best solution?

NEW ORLEANS — Late Thursday night, one man meandered through Ole Miss’ celebratory locker room with something other than the recent Sugar Bowl win over Georgia on his mind.

Somewhat exasperated and a bag thrown over his shoulder as he hurried to round up players to leave the Superdome, Austin Thomas, the program’s new general manager, quipped to a couple of nearby media members, “The portal opens in a couple hours!”

This time of year, a confluence of events creates a congested college football calendar. The back end of the coaching carousel is roaring, with schools hiring and firing assistant coaches. Roster retainment and replacement is humming as more than one-fifth of FBS players have entered the 15-day transfer portal since it opened on Friday.

And, for the last few weeks, teams have been preparing and playing in bowl or playoff games. For another few days, at least the four playoff teams will continue to operate the off-the-field business aspect of the industry while preparing for postseason games.

There’s something else, too: Because of coaching changes, assistants at playoff teams like Ole Miss and Oregon are juggling jobs elsewhere, too.

“We need to change the calendar,” former Alabama coach Nick Saban said Thursday during ESPN’s “College GameDay,” echoing the feeling from many administrators and coaches within the industry.

There’s good news: The calendar is changing — at some point.

The NCAA Football Oversight Committee, led by Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks and Buffalo AD Mark Alnutt, is examining the college football calendar and is expected to recommend potentially significant changes to several aspects as soon as this offseason.

“We’re trying to take a step back and look at everything in totality so we’re not doing one-offs that have an impact on other parts of the calendar,” Brooks told Yahoo Sports. “We’ve got to take a 30,000-foot view and see how everything could be better.”

In an interview with Yahoo Sports from the Sugar Bowl site last week in New Orleans, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey says calendar changes should start with one idea: eliminating the December early signing period. “Put it back in February, maybe even mid-February,” Sankey said, referring to the traditional February signing day. “What we’ve done is pressured the front end of recruitment.”

Signing day is just one aspect that officials will explore in the examination of the calendar. Others include: 1. the future of Week Zero (will it become the new Week 1?); 2. the playing dates of the College Football Playoff (is there a way to return the semifinals to New Year’s Day?); 3. the date of the transfer portal (is a single spring portal gaining more momentum?); and 4. spring and summer access periods (will the sport, finally, implement OTA-type summer training?).

Overall, the goal of any calendar changes is to decongest December-January. Or, as Saban suggests, create a more NFL-like calendar for college football, which includes the draft (signing day) and free agency (the portal) happening after the postseason and eliminating spring practice. In that model, the assembling and development of most of a team in the offseason would shift from December-March to April-June.

“You wouldn’t have these issues with coaches changing jobs because everybody could finish the season with their team because there would be no hurry,” Saban said.

But that’s easier said than done.

The early signing date

The three-day early signing period, beginning on the first Wednesday in December, has replaced February’s traditional signing date as the primary window for athletes to strike agreements with their schools (normally, about 80% of top athletes sign in December).

Many conferences lobbied for the early date to accelerate the recruiting process, ending recruitments sooner, building a roster fast and preventing powerhouse programs from flipping athletes later.

However, at least some folks believe that the early signing date — along with the transfer portal — has increased midseason coach firing and expedited coach hirings, as administrators work to have coaches in place ahead of these dates.

While administrators kicked around, and still are considering, a summer signing date (the Big Ten proposed a June date in years past), Sankey believes that a complete elimination of the early signing period is a way to slow the coaching hiring and firing that’s taken place earlier in the season than ever.

“Philosophically, I think everybody would say that you should start the season and complete the season with every sport with your roster and coaching staff intact, noting there could be serious life exceptions,” Sankey said. “How do you get there? Some of it is, you look at the calendar and try to move some of the upfront pressure.”

At the annual American Football Coaches Association Convention next week, executive director Craig Bohl plans to hold several meetings to discuss the calendar as a whole, including the early signing date.

“You hear that coaches are being fired earlier because you’ve got to get your guys signed,” Bohl said.

The transfer portal

Most coaches — and all but one of the 10 FBS conferences — supported moving to the current portal structure in a change last year: from two portal periods (December and April) to a single period (January). Big Ten administrators and coaches argued for a portal in the spring, such as March and April, to more align with the academic calendar (most end in May), revenue-share cap year (ends in June) and have the postseason finish before player transactions.

Most others supported a January portal to assemble their team and develop them during traditional spring practice. In fact, the SEC and its coaches — most publicly Georgia’s Kirby Smart — argued for this.

Well, as the portal hums amid an expanded College Football Playoff and coaching changes and semester classes begin, some believe the portal’s timing should be revisited.

“We have a transfer portal that opens on Jan. 2 because that’s what was identified by the American Football Coaches Association as the coaching community’s solution,” Sankey said. “Is the coaching community going to work to make that work or not?”

In discussions with coaches, Bohl says the shifting of the portal to January created a “much better” December. There was tampering, sure, he said, but “as challenging as the portal window is now, it’s better than where we’ve had it before.”

The reason for a January portal — to assemble your team quicker — is an archaic mindset that needs to be changed, Ohio State Ross Bjork said last year. “If we want to worry about the financial component and the academic component, the best window is spring.”

“Everybody has to look at it like this: College football has changed,” Washington AD Pat Chun said last summer. “We should not have transfer movement until we crown a national champion.”

Spring and summer access

The portal’s date impacts decisions on the future of spring practice.

Over the last several years, schools are pivoting away from spring games, and many coaches are holding more limited spring practices. Should they be discontinued and replaced with more summer training?

Last year, the AFCA released a proposal to alter spring and summer access by permitting coaches to hold six OTA-style practices in the summer (mostly June). The proposal allowed for coaches to also move a portion of their spring practices to the summer.

However, some coaches are against waiting until May or June, more than five months after the completion of the regular season, to assemble their full team. And if you move the portal and eliminate spring practice, what about the players who, after the regular season, have already decided to leave in the spring? Do they continue on their current campus for another four months attending classes and working out with the team?

“Is that a good thing?” Brooks asks.

NC State coach Dave Doeren said last summer that “you don’t want to spend three months training guys who are leaving” while holding spring practice.

College football transfer news

College football transfer portal USF QB Byrum Brown headed to Auburn

Week Zero and CFP dates

For years now, administrators have toyed with the idea of turning Week Zero into the new Week 1. As it stands now, schools must be granted a waiver to compete on Week Zero (there are usually 10-15 games involving FBS teams).

However, FBS officials are considering eliminating the waiver process, completely opening Week Zero to all schools as FCS did last year. This may lead to a few intended or unintended consequences. Schools, wanting an additional bye week, would begin playing on Week Zero much more regularly, to the point that it becomes the new season-opening weekend.

And that leads to a much bigger move: shifting the entire regular season up by a week. This could be a long-term play to arrive at that destination. Why shift the regular season up? Officials could then move up an expanded College Football Playoff that continues to finish deeper and deeper into January, both conflicting with the NFL playoff slate (an issue for TV purposes) and stretching into the spring semester.

However, there are complications with this from two entities of which college sports hold a financial and historical relationship: television and the bowls. Would TV networks support turning Thanksgiving weekend — a smorgasbord of rivalry games from Thursday through Saturday — into conference championship game weekend?

And then there are the six CFP bowls, which hold sacred playing on New Year’s Day. Shifting up the season means semifinal play on New Year’s Day (two bowl games instead of four).

Nothing about any of this is easy. But, perhaps soon enough, the calendar will be decongested.