Coaches around college football almost unanimously support a single NCAA Transfer Portal window -- even if different opinions remain on the optimal timing for such a move. But there's also a "third Portal window," as sources explained this week to FootballScoop.
The NCAA calendar for the 2024-25 year had a pair of condensed Transfer Portal windows that operated from Dec. 9-28, 2024, and April 16-25, 2025.
It turns out, in a bit of a little-known element, there's actually an additional window. It's essentially opening right now.
Numerous college football general managers this week explained to FootballScoop how this "third Portal window" operates, which players are eligible to utilize it and the timeline. It stems from U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken's insistence that the House Settlement's final agreement protect the roster spots for all student-athletes where new roster limits were going to curtail roster numbers, such as college football at the FBS level being capped in the future at a 105-roster maximum.
"We designated our guys last week," said a prominent G.M. at a Power Conference school. "It's good for them ... but this (crap) is confusing already."
As FootballScoop detailed in reporting last month, grandfathered student-athletes control their destiny -- at their current school or any future institution.
From the report:
A student-athlete in any sport who receives the "grandfathered" designation is then free to transfer -- pending eligibility to do so -- to any other institution and maintain that "grandfathered" status. He used an arbitrary example of a sport that had to eventually carry a 15-person roster but that might currently have 20 athletes on its active roster.
Another general manager further described this current Portal session as follows:
"Yes - it is for “designated” roster members. Essentially, players who would not have been selected as members of the 105-man roster are now grandfathered in by the House settlement with a designated S-A tag.
"Players who were told in anticipation of the settlement they could no longer be on the roster are able to be designated as well, giving these guys a portal window to find a new home."
Most people who spoke to FootballScoop on this topic indicated that they do not believe this "third Portal window" will be robust in activity as most student-athletes who received the official S-A designation likely were fringe scholarship players or walk-ons.
Numerous places, Power Conference programs Iowa and Missouri among them, already had begun informing players as long ago as December, in the case of Iowa, that they anticipated a 105-man roster and could not guarantee spots.
"In theory, you could say we told 20 guys on our roster, 'Hey, we can't guarantee you a roster spot'" at the 105-roster limit, said an additional general manager. "'You've got a scholarship but no roster spot.' We were told we have to have our designated list submitted by July 4."
This new Portal window will open for approximately one month and is set to formally start next week, they said.
"It runs until the first week of August, but nobody can really transfer in the first few days of August after camps everywhere have already opened and expect to get up to speed with a new team," a G.M. added.
Meanwhile, in the big-picture future for the Transfer Portal, one G.M. added this message to FootballScoop:
"Everyone seems like we are going to one window," he said. "I'm still skeptical. ...
"Anything limiting player movement is going to have lawsuits."