The day after details emerged about Mark Stoops’ contract extension with Kentucky, the coach held his weekly show. As callers asked about a range of topics Monday night, they congratulated Stoops on his new deal.
Stoops’ annual salary had increased to $8.6 million per year plus incentives through the 2030 season, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football. He thanked everyone, but after another question started with recognition of his contract, Stoops wished he could give away some of the money.
“You know how many people are going after our young players?” Stoops said. “We have as good of freshmen as I’ve ever had. And it’s like a free-for-all.”
Stoops sounded exasperated, using words like “insane” and “mass chaos,” as he discussed the current landscape and pleaded for donations to a collective designed to fund name, image and likeness opportunities. One called The 15 Club formed around Kentucky last week. It will accept contributions and facilitate deals between businesses and players.
“I’m sorry,” Stoops said. “I hate to ask but we need the support. We need it desperately. It’s total free agency.”
Many described the sport in similar terms over the past year. With NIL money available and the ability to transfer once without losing a season, players change schools at a higher rate than ever. The combination has created the equivalent of a free agent market at the college level that regularly puts rosters in flux.
A year into this new era, the first transfer portal window opens Dec. 5 for Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Fueled by NIL money, the portal is expected to fill up quickly and remain active until the window closes 45 days later. The transfer portal opens again May 1-15 after spring practice.
“Nobody's had to handle this much volume of turnover and uncertainty on rosters before,” Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz said. “I think in the next two weeks, college football will be surprised by the amount of fluidity that's going to be created.”
LSU will have to navigate the first days of the open portal immediately after the Southeastern Conference championship next week. The No. 5 Tigers started having conversations with players during their open date, LSU coach Brian Kelly said, which could help since the window begins two days after the conference title game.
“Some of it is you have to react, but you are hoping to be less reactionary and much more proactive in that,” Kelly said. “But I think everybody knows what those dates are, and some of those conversations will have to take place once the window does open up.”
Despite having less time, LSU is in an enviable position. It will play for a championship after wrapping up the regular season 6 p.m. Saturday against Texas A&M. The Aggies, who aren’t bowl eligible, have to retain the players from the No. 1 recruiting class in the country last year after a losing season.
“We're all bracing for much more volume than it was a year ago,” Stoops said. “I think even last year, going through it for the first time, it was a little slower maybe in the fall in football than you're going to see this year.”
If the other divisions gave a preview, then the transfer portal will burst open after months of inactivity.
Brian Spilbeler, chief operating officer of Tracking Football, has monitored transfer portal trends since last year. He said 250 players submitted their names when the window opened Monday for Football Championship Subdivision teams.
It broke a single-day record.
“If early indications show anything,” Spilbeler said, “it’s that while the window of time for these guys to be able to enter is reduced, that means the volume that is likely to come through during those time periods will be significantly higher than what it would have been on a daily level in the past.”
The windows were proposed by the American Football Coaches Association during the offseason in an attempt to make roster management easier after the busiest year of the transfer portal yet. AFCA executive director Todd Berry suggested them, citing concerns over health and safety and the strain placed on coaching staffs.
The NCAA later adopted specific windows for fall, winter and spring sports that naturally coincided with the end of the respective seasons, the most popular time for athletes to enter the portal. The NCAA also lifted 25-player signing class limits in football for the next two cycles to help teams backfill their rosters. Coaches can sign as many players as they want as long as they stay under 85 total scholarships.
“That concept of being able to get in (the portal) whenever you wanted to was difficult on everyone,” Berry said. “Even for the players who were looking to get into the portal because they didn't know who else was going to be in the portal at the time.”
The transfer portal surge correlated with NIL, and this will be the first cycle with the portal open and fully formed NIL plans at schools. Though not every player transfers for more NIL opportunities, people within the industry anticipate the crossover will contribute to movement next month, particularly for the most sought-after athletes.
“Certainly NIL money is going to drive an awful lot of this,” Berry said. “If you're in the portal, then people know you're maybe shopping for more NIL money.”
A lot of the money comes from donor collectives, which schools and its employees can now encourage fans to contribute to after the NCAA issued new guidance.
Mit Winter, an attorney specializing in college sports and NIL at Kennyhertz Perry in Kansas City, said there were 20-30 donor collectives at most this time last year. He estimates there are now about 200 across the country.
“Not all collectives are created equal,” Winter said. “It's easy to start a collective, but it's hard to continually raise money and then continually create and source the deals that you need to get money to the athletes, because even if you have a bunch of money sitting around, you can't just give it to the athletes without them doing something in return for that money.”
The situation leaves coaches trying to adapt between bowl season and the early signing period. Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said he still wants to sign about 20 high school recruits before going into the portal, but having the chance for larger signing classes the next two years may lead him to adding more players from the portal.
Drinkwitz expected to have four more scholarships available when Missouri had 15 recruits committed last week — it has since added three more — but he knows he may end up with additional scholarships at his disposal as players already on the roster unexpectedly leave.
“Obviously, just like everybody else in college football, I'm sure there's players on our team who are going to transfer that we don't know about yet,” Drinkwitz said. “That's going to create additional need in resources.”
Although everyone has to deal with the same situation, coaches take different approaches. Top-ranked Georgia didn’t add a transfer this year, though it was in contention for several. At LSU, Kelly hired a robust personnel department that scouted every Louisiana native on Power Five teams in case they enter the transfer portal.
Bringing high-character players back to the state helped Kelly and the staff turn around the program in Year 1. Eventually he wants the roster fully constructed out of traditional recruiting classes, but until LSU has enough of them stacked on top of one another, Kelly intends to use the transfer portal again this offseason, looking for players with Louisiana ties who can help at positions of need.
“If somebody is a free agent and they decide to deem themselves a free agent by going into the portal, we'll be prepared,” Kelly said. “We'll be ready.”
