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Transfer portal season is coming soon in college football. And this year's edition is guaranteed to be fast and furious. The transfer portal officially opens on Jan. 2, the day after the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, for a frenzied two-week period of transactions at the FBS and FCS level. The elimination of the spring portal window in April means programs have one shot to get this right if they want to win big in 2026. This season has brought more proof of concept that a portal-heavy approach can dramatically flip a program's fortunes, with Indiana, Texas Tech and Ole Miss in the national championship hunt thanks to the transfer classes they've assembled. We've officially entered the revenue-sharing era of college athletics. Schools are investing more money than ever into their football rosters. Bidding wars for top transfers can easily surpass $1 million. While all that extra cash should help programs retain key talent for next year, we're still going to see a lot of surprises in January. Here are three big reasons why the upcoming transfer portal cycle will be wilder than ever.  Nobody is waiting until JanuaryThe transfer portal window is moving from December to January this offseason. But behind the scenes, business is already booming. By the time we get to Jan. 2 and players can officially enter the transfer portal, don't be shocked if hundreds of them are already off the board. Several general managers, recruiting staffers and agents surveyed by ESPN compared the upcoming first day of portal season to NBA free agency. "At 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 2, you're going to see people instantly commit," one agent predicted. "Deals have to be made ahead of time." Pushing the start date back from Dec. 8 to Jan. 2 was proposed to help keep rosters together through the postseason and the coaching carousel. Portal recruiting starting on the first Monday after bowl selections made the calendar much more hectic for coaching staffs across the country. But it also allowed transfers to immediately take visits, make their decision and get enrolled at their next school for the start of January. Now those visits can't happen until January, but enrollment deadlines aren't changing. In many cases, players entering the portal on Jan. 2 will be starting classes at their new school on Jan. 12 -- and several current top-25 programs, including Oregon, Michigan and Vanderbilt, start the week before. "It's going to really mess up a lot of registrars' offices and admissions offices and put an unbelievable strain on college front offices," another agent said. So over the next six weeks, all this transfer activity is going to occur beneath the surface by necessity. In fact, many general managers started working on their 2026 roster in early October. The conversations on contract renegotiations for returning players are already well underway. But now we're also going to see player agents and GMs quietly agreeing to deals for transfers without getting the player in the portal or on campus for a visit first. "It's going to be like a legal tampering period in the NFL on steroids," one Big 12 director of player personnel said. "It's going to be a full recruiting period. There are going to be kids who are damn near committed." The NCAA definition of tampering is communication with student-athletes "or any individual associated with the student-athlete," directly or indirectly, before they've entered the transfer portal. But now that more players are represented by agents than ever, this technically impermissible communication is happening all the time. Agents are in daily communication with GMs and directors of player personnel about their clients and how much money they're seeking. Essentially, nothing is tampering because everything is tampering. Players with remaining eligibility are already being shopped around by their reps. As soon as their season ends, they'll go public with their intentions to enter the portal. FCS and Division II players are already doing so. Agents say some of their clients may keep quiet about their plans through December due to the terms of their current revenue-share deals. "No school wants to get in trouble," a Big 12 GM reasoned, "so I think it'll be hush-hush until January." But they're still going to engage in bidding wars for top talent during this pre-portal period, hoping to secure verbal commitments and build momentum well before Jan. 2. The NCAA dead period prohibits in-person recruiting visits in the month of December. Some agencies expect to have videoconferences and phone calls with coaches and GMs next month that include their clients who aren't officially in the portal. "If you're not doing that," an agent said, "you're behind the curve."
Chaotic coaching carousel will shake up portalAt the end of the 2024 season, only five Power 4 programs went through head coaching changes. This year, we hit five Power 4 vacancies by the end of September. We're officially entering silly season with the coaching carousel this week as ADs attempt to lock down hires that could result in several more high-profile jobs opening. The fallout in the transfer portal will be immediate and potentially immense. "I think the domino effect is going to be massive," an agent said. Athletic directors are watching Indiana achieve the impossible with back-to-back College Football Playoff runs under coach Curt Cignetti and dreaming of similar fast flips. The 13 players whom Cignetti and his staff brought from James Madison have been team leaders and All-Big Ten performers. They've made a program-altering impact. A new head coach attempting to bring a dozen or more players with him from his previous school is probably going to be the norm in December. "I think that's the thing that hasn't been discussed as much," the agent said. "It's coming up in coaching interviews: Can you bring players? That's totally going on." It's still a touchy topic even in this increasingly transactional sport. Coaches want to take their best guys with them but know they're damaging their relationship with the place they're leaving in the process. Cignetti got significant backlash and felt JMU fans treated him like a "villain," believing he had tampered with his JMU imports. "I mean, they were going in the portal," Cignetti told ESPN last year. "If we wouldn't recruit 'em, somebody else would've. They were good enough to help us." The tug-of-war to poach your current players isn't always easy and must be handled carefully. Last year, Arizona star receiver Tetairoa McMillan told ESPN that he and quarterback Noah Fifita would have followed Jedd Fisch and his coaching staff to Washington had their head coach been more transparent with the duo about his plans prior to leaving. "That's for sure, that's no question," McMillan said. "I feel like if they would've went about it better or in a different way then, shoot, we would've followed them in a heartbeat." This offseason, the transfer quarterback market already feels closely tied to how the coaching searches shake out. North Texas QB Drew Mestemaker has been a popular target among Power 4 front offices since September, and he'll likely become one of the highest-paid passers in the portal if he elects to transfer. But multiple sources close to Mestemaker have told ESPN there's a strong chance the nation's leading passer would ultimately prefer to follow coach Eric Morris to a Power 4 program. Will prized freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele stay at Cal after coach Justin Wilcox was fired Sunday? Would Lane Kiffin take Trinidad Chambliss with him to LSU or Florida if he leaves Ole Miss? Is sticking with current USF coach Alex Golesh the best move for Byrum Brown and his future? There are plenty more high-profile returning QBs tied to head coaches who could make moves in the weeks ahead. The five programs that did make new hires last winter -- North Carolina, Purdue, UCF, Wake Forest and West Virginia -- all brought in more than 30 transfers for Year 1. Purdue and West Virginia signed more than 50 newcomers out of the portal. We'll continue to see massive roster overhauls this offseason at programs like Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State and Arkansas that hope to execute expedited rebuilds for 2026. Players cannot enter the transfer portal right after a coaching change anymore. This offseason, everybody is waiting until Jan. 2. But that doesn't mean a program can take its time and wait until late December to decide on a head coaching hire. If they care about retaining the roster, these ADs need to wrap up their searches soon.
The over-the-cap challengeCap circumvention is the name of the game this offseason, because everyone says they want guardrails until they actually get guardrails. The House settlement established a revenue sharing cap of roughly $20.5 million per school for 2025-26. Every school will divide up those funds differently, but it's common to see around 70% or 75% of those funds (about $14 million to $15 million) dedicated to football at the Power 4 level. If you want to compete at the highest level, however, fully funded revenue sharing isn't enough. Coaching agents tell ESPN this is the No. 1 topic they're raising with athletic directors as they discuss this year's vacancies: How much cap room do you have and what's your plan for spending over the cap? Schools that had strong NIL collective support front-loaded their deals with players for 2025, paying out millions before July 1 to keep that money off the books in anticipation of the House settlement establishing a cap as well as a new enforcement arm, the College Sports Commission (CSC), that requires deals to be reported and legitimate. The consequences were foreseeable: Power 4 programs intentionally overspent on their 2025 rosters, which significantly inflated the cost of acquiring transfers and the perceived roster value of players at every position. Now agents are expecting pay raises for 2026, not pay cuts. "I talk to these agents and they discuss the market and they're just lying, saying every player is worth $500,000 and every really good player is worth $1 million," the Big 12 director of player personnel said. "But then you talk to other GMs and they say the same thing. It's ridiculous." And so, yet again, any returning college football player can explore free agency if they're not satisfied with their deal for next year. The methods that Power 4 programs plan to employ to exceed the cap for 2026 and elude issues with the CSC continue to be shrouded in secrecy, but head coaches haven't been shy about the necessity of these tactics. Kiffin is reportedly being promised more than $25 million in NIL roster investment by Ole Miss, LSU and Florida. Nebraska's Matt Rhule sought similar commitments with his contract extension in October. "In a world of $30 [million] and $40 million rosters, which isn't going away, I'd like us to do the same thing," Rhule said. "I think everyone's trying to find the best, cleanest way to do it," one ACC GM said. "There's going to be side deals under the table. It's going to be messy." As we go through the final week of the regular season and renegotiations for 2026 ramp up, expect to see more rumors and reports emerge like they did for Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt last week. If the school and the reps are far apart in their initial conversations on next year's deal, that's bound to leak out just as it does in pro sports. The programs that can't or won't spend beyond the revenue sharing cap for 2026 will have to make difficult decisions about which players they can afford to bring back and how to manage their cap room. Some GMs are telling agents that money is tight right now as they try to stay within their budget. Agents aren't falling for that line. "There is no f---ing cap," one agent said. "The ADs are trying to figure out how to do this, but here's the thing: All it takes is one school not following the rules and taking the best players. It's going to be a free-for-all after that. "If a team prioritizes a kid, they're going to find a way to make it work. They're going to pay a guy what he's worth -- if not more -- regardless of the rules if they value him enough."
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