Bret Bielema explains his preference for timing, number of transfer portal windows

Rule changes have been the norm in college football over the past few years as the sport has undergone a rapid transformation. The implementation of NIL and the transfer portal have altered the very fabric of the sport.

And still it’s not clear that college football has settled on the appropriate setup for everything. The transfer portal windows, for one, remain in a state of flux.

There’s already been some changes, but coaches are pushing for more. They want a system that’s a little easier to manage, and many coaches want only one open window for the transfer portal, rather than two.

“I think there should be one and it should be as early as humanly possible,” Illinois coach Bret Bielema said on The Triple Option podcast. “I know there’s a lot of discussion between January, February, March, April. I think all coaches would want it sooner than later. The only thing I see as a problem or would become problematic is when the portal is actually in the playing season.”

That became clear last season, when a program like Penn State had to grapple with its backup quarterback entering the transfer portal during a playoff run. And he wasn’t just a backup quarterback, he was a change-of-pace option that the team used fairly regularly within the offense.

Coaches across the country are terrified of facing their own Beau Pribula moment. Bielema hit on that concern with the transfer portal.

“Even if it’s just down to a couple teams that are playing in the championship game, I would ideally love to put it like championship game is on a Monday, I’d love to open it on a Wednesday for a 15-, 30-day window,” he said. “But I also get January allows you to get the kids in school. I think we have to take into consideration the calendars, how it lays out.”

There’s one factor, though, that Bielema believes needs to be a much bigger concern when dealing with the transfer portal and how to structure it. As simple as it sounds, that’s academics.

“I think our student-athletes, the one thing that scares me to death … they had a thing a couple years ago that basically tracked your APR, which is your annual progression rate of graduation for coaches,” Bielema explained. “And it used to be a really big deal. I haven’t had anybody ask me about graduation rates in 10 years. Right? Because all these other things have come to the forefront.

“We just had our fifth straight semester of a 3.0 GPA. That’s never been done in Illinois history. So I’m really proud of that. But I just don’t think some people put that importance and that premium, and I’m really scared about the graduation rates of this current world of college football. We all want to talk about how great it’s going to be for these guys as players, but bottom line not everybody makes a living for the rest of their lives in the NFL, so we’ve got to take care of everybody.”