Report: Details emerge on proposed spring college football calendar, single transfer portal window

A proposal for a new spring college football calendar was shared with coaches at the ACC spring meetings, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported. It would include adding six contactless OTA-style practices, and a single transfer portal window continues to be discussed for either January, March or April.

Under the proposal – shared with multiple ACC coaches – the OTA-like practices would likely be in May or June, according to Dellenger. The limit of 15 spring practices will still be in place, meaning teams would have 21 total counting the contactless practices.

Another version also includes the ability to spread those practices over two five-week periods between February and April and late May into June, per Dellenger. Regardless, a decision is not expected until one comes on a single transfer portal window, as well as the House v. NCAA settlement.

The idea of OTA-style practices gained steam this past spring as programs around the country opted not to hold traditional spring scrimmages. Many around college football also called for a potential change to the calendar due to the expanded College Football Playoff, including Ohio State coach Ryan Day as his team comes off a national championship victory over Notre Dame.

As for the transfer portal, current rules call for two windows – one in the winter after the final CFP rankings announcement and another during the spring. However, coaches don’t want the portal to open during the spring, according to On3’s Pete Nakos. Instead, they want one singular window.

“I’m certainly in favor of shortening the portal windows,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer previously told On3. “I’m not anti-portal. We’ve benefited from the portal, but people don’t need two different portal windows that cover around six weeks to decide that they want to transfer from somewhere. You either want to be a part of that program or you don’t.

That decision, however, won’t come until after one comes down on the House settlement. Judge Claudia Wilken sent the two sides back to make changes to the verbiage around roster limits and threatened to deny final approval if they did not do so. Those revisions came last week as the plaintiffs and defendants agreed to a plan to allow schools to opt-in to “grandfather” spots on roster for athletes who were set to lose them due to the settlement.

Friday marks the deadline to file objections to the revisions. Now, it’s up to Wilken to decide whether the agreement warrants final approval.