The NCAA is about two months away from changing the football transfer portal. The FBS and FCS Oversight Committees have voted to recommend doing away with the Spring portal window. There is one coach who is a fan of the proposed change. Wake head coach Dave Clawson says, “The Spring portal is so dirty.”
The Here and Now
The current portal has a 30-day window from the Monday after the conference championship games for 30 days. For the 2024-2025 window that would be December 9th-January 7th. There has also been a 15-day window towards the end of most teams’ Spring camp in April. Players have been going through a team’s camp, finding out they are down deep on the depth chart, and then leaving. The timing gave them a very short window to be academically admitted somewhere else for summer school and be there for Fall camp.
There is a potential amendment to the current proposal. It would extend the Winter window from 30 to 40 days to help offset the loss of the Spring window. The new rule would maintain the exemption for players who are competing in the College Football Playoffs beyond January 7th. They would have an extra five days from the time of their school’s last post-season game, regardless of how far they go in the playoffs.
Dave Clawson
Clawson is on the Board of Trustees of the American Football Coaches Association, (AFCA). He is often referred to as one of the big thinkers in the coaching ranks. That is a reference to the bigger issues in the sport above and beyond the X’s and O’s of the game. Administrators from other schools have told Last Word that Clawson would have a lot of support for almost any national administrative job in college football he wanted when his coaching days are over.
We posed that possibility to Clawson at ACC media days in July. He was open to the option. But feels he has at least a few more years of coaching ahead of him. Still, he has never shied away from answering big-picture questions about the game in which he has spent nearly four decades.
The Need for Change
That was the case this week when we asked him at his weekly news conference about the proposed changes.
“Yes,” he said this week when asked if he supported dropping the Spring portal window. “You get extorted twice.” He said that when players decide to return after the season ends and the Winter portal, a program counts on their decisions. To have them change their mind a few months later creates holes in the roster.
Wake felt such a blow when cornerback DaShawn Jones entered the portal at the close of the window, after Spring camp. Days later he committed to play at Alabama. It was a blow to the Demon Deacons secondary which had already lost two starters from the 2023 season to the NFL Draft.
That’s not to say Clawson is opposed to the players having the chance to move elsewhere. “If they want to leave, they should be given the opportunity to leave,” he said. “But to decide to stay, and you plan your team around that person that decided to stay. For them to then change their mind [after going through camp]…”
The Dirty Part
Clawson has somewhat openly discussed tampering by other schools. It has been somewhat open, because like nearly every coach in the country, they know it happens, they say it happens, but rarely do they publicly point a finger at the culprit.
Clawson made inferences last year. He “wondered” how his then-starting-quarterback Sam Hartman wound up at Notre Dame for a year, instead of putting his name in for the NFL Draft as many assumed he would.
This week he backed up his claim of the muck and mire in the Spring window by referencing his current roster. “With the Spring portal, if you talk to our players about the amount of schools that reach out directly to them right before the window closes, it’s dirty.”
Athlete Freedoms
He acknowledges that a school like Wake Forest is up against it when it comes to bigger programs and competing for players in the college football system. Clawson has still maintained that he advocates for players getting their true NIL money and having the freedom to transfer. He made such a reference at the press conference. “There is a different dynamic to college football. We’re going to be playing some teams with pretty high payrolls. And we’re going to have to play really, really well in those football games.”
He said at least with the Winter portal being the only time to transfer, you have your roster in place before January is over. “At least you have building blocks.” He pointed out that if basketball loses a player, you adjust the scheme. In football, he said, there are so many positions to fill, and losing them too late in the process takes a toll.
He said losing a player so late in the process in the Spring forces the school to then go hit up someone else’s roster late in the game. It creates a difficult cycle.
“Again, they should have the opportunity to leave,” he reiterated. “We all have to make decisions, right? And if they decide to stay, they should stay.”
The NCAA
Nearly every decision the NCAA has made to try to alter the transfer portal has been met with immediate lawsuits by attorneys representing college athletes. We consulted with two labor attorneys regarding this change. They did not wish to go on the record because they have had cases with and against the NCAA. But both said this change had a good chance of surviving legal challenges because it did not alter who could transfer or how it would impact any eligibility. It was simply a change in the calendar process. Although both said adding another week to offset the loss of the Spring window would help the cause.
The final vote for approval by the D1 Council is expected to take place in October.
Photo from Tony Siracusa
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