College football coaches are discussing a revised recruiting calendar that would place more attention on transfers and current rosters immediately after the regular season.
American Football Coaches Association executive director Todd Berry told ESPN on Friday that the increasingly active transfer portal -- not the mid-December signing period for high school players -- is driving discussion about possibly changing the recruiting calendar.
Discussions are underway with the Division I football oversight committee and the recruiting subcommittee on whether moving back the first signing period to early January would better serve the sport.
Coaches will continue discussions at the AFCA convention in January, and Berry will present "a brand-new recruiting calendar" at the NCAA convention that follows.
"The recruiting calendar needs to change because the whole transfer portal [has] upset everything," Berry said.
As of Friday, more than 280 FBS players had entered the portal since Dec. 1, with four since withdrawing their names.
Berry said the number of early coaching changes this year is not a direct result of the mid-December signing period, noting that it has been in place for several years.
"This is nothing new," Berry said. "What's new this year is you've got 85 players on your current team that are free agents. Most of our coaches would suggest that's what's really sped up the cycle. The early signing date being Dec. 15, we might not even know, as coaches, who's going to be in the transfer portal at that time. So it's hard to replace a football team when you don't even know who's going to come back.
"The bottom line is that makes that date a little bit difficult."
Berry has heard from many coaches who had to cancel recruiting visits immediately after the regular season in late November so they could "recruit their own team." He said he thinks there's value in implementing a dead period for recruiting immediately after the regular season so coaches can assess their rosters and determine who could be transferring in and out, before pivoting to high school recruiting.
The current FBS recruiting calendar allows coaches to recruit off campus between Nov. 28 and Dec. 11, before a dead period goes into effect before the early signing date. Berry received positive feedback about the early signing period, especially from high school prospects hoping to enroll midyear in college and compete with transfers looking to move schools around the same time. But a slightly later period for early signings would make the entire process "not so rushed," Berry said. He has seen new and existing head coaches hiring their staffs faster than ever to prevent mass transfers.
Another item coaches are discussing is whether to implement a transfer window, which could run from after the regular season until the start of the winter semester. While athletes could announce their intention to transfer earlier, Berry said the portal would "open up" for a specific period.
"The transfer portal is here, we all recognize it. It's changing the face of things, and that's not going back, obviously," Berry said. "Everyone has to adjust to it. I do think that there needs to be this idea of maybe two different cycles and maybe two different recruiting windows.
"It gives the coaches a lot more clarity about who's on their team and what they have to replace in the recruiting cycle."