ATHENS — It seems as if even in the middle of the college football season, the transfer portal looms just around the corner.
A handful of players across the country have opted to redshirt after four games, with plans to persevere eligibility and transfer elsewhere. On Tuesday, the NCAA shortened the transfer portal’s length from 45 days over two windows to 30 days over two windows.
The December transfer portal window will open on Dec. 9 and close on Dec. 28. A second spring window will open on April 16 and close on April 25.
“I think it’s going to be really weird because you’ve got this playoff thing going on,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “So there’s some people that feel like in the midst of a playoff, you’re going to have guys that are maybe frustrated or unhappy on the team. It’s on a playoff run, and they’re going to be checked out. So, but that has nothing to do with them shortening it, because, I mean, that was going to happen inevitably anyway.”
Georgia hasn’t been a team that has been overly reliant on the transfer portal, certainly compared to other schools like Ole Miss or Oregon. But the Bulldogs have begun to lean more on the transfer portal in recent years.
The Bulldogs took in nine players via the transfer portal this past offseason. Prior to the 2022 season, one that ended in a national championship for Georgia, that number was zero.
Given that Georgia loses so much to the transfer portal every year — the Bulldogs saw 21 scholarship players transfer out last season — it has necessitated the usage of the transfer portal as a way to address needs and maintain depth.
For example, Georgia has brought in five wide receivers via the transfer portal over the previous two cycles. Given the nature of how quickly those players will cycle out of the program — London Humphreys is the only one of those five expected to be on next year’s team — Georgia will once again have to dip back into the transfer portal this offseason to address the wide receiver position.
And it doesn’t help that one of those transfer wide receivers was kicked off the team in August and another was arrested on Wednesday.
“When we go to take somebody on a transfer portal, I can’t say I’ve known them as long as I’ve known a recruit, right,” Smart said. “I’ve recruited a kid since his junior year, senior year, but then all of a sudden, in recruiting, we’ll take a kid in the last month that we think’s a good player, and we do a background check. We check on him, do everything.”
Smart did add that there’s more back-and-forth involved when accessing players out of the transfer portal in terms of communication between schools. Sometimes he might get a rose-colored view of a prospect out of high school in comparison.
“I actually feel more comfortable over a portal kid, because I’m getting real-time information,” Smart said. “He’s lived outside of his home and been on his own for maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe three years, maybe four years.”
The events of recent weeks have only further reinforced that the transfer portal is now a major part of college football. It has very real impacts on all teams, even ones like Georgia.
And as much as Smart wants to and likes to lean on high school recruiting, the Georgia coach around him recognizes the waters around him have grown. He’s accepted that.
“But times, they are changing, I can promise you that,” Smart said. “There’s a lot of unknown for us moving in the future with the NCAA stuff coming down the pipe and even the portal stuff. We don’t know what the future holds.”
