The transfer portal has been a complete mess for a while. The cumulative structure of NIL and the ever-changing college football reality hits hard in the bowl season. Just a few days back, Beau Pribula’s Penn State departure was the talk of the town, as the Nittany Lions didn’t expect to head to their playoff without their reliable backup QB under their belt. But you can’t blame the players for choosing their own career growth over unwavering loyalty to a certain school. Rather, it’s the overlapping portal timeline that made all the trouble. Now, the rouble stretched beyond the playoffs. As we step into the bowl season, teams find their roster half empty, as half of them have left for the portal. What is the answer then?

Pushing the players to choose between the development of their careers and staying true to the school that has played for a significant time is a brutal co-incident of the current CFB structure. Pribula left with a ‘heavy heart’, and many more Pribulas faced the same dilemma in their portal moves. But those who suffered the consequences the most were the coaches.

Players intending to transfer must enter the portal by Dec. 28 or have to hover around until April 16. That timeframe was sanctioned in October — a window reduced by 15 days after earlier complaints from coaches. The entire ball game is getting cranked up with the bowl season knocking on the door.

To look at the worst, Marshall opted out of a bowl game after a handful of its players decided to transfer in the trail of a coaching change. It’s high time to address and debug. Digging into a hypothetical solution, Adam Breneman reflected, ‘‘How do we fix it? Here are three ideas:– Move back the Transfer Portal window, – Introduce binding contracts for participation, – Allow red shirts to play without losing eligibility.”

‘We talk about making a system that is all great for them, but we haven’t. I mean, that’s part of your job as adults is to do what’s best for young people, not what they want necessarily. They don’t want this. There’s no other sport at all that has a free agency in the season. It’s sad, it’s terrible,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee divulged, chiming into the current portal catastrophe.

Altering the transfer portal deadline would seem wise for this season, but Deion Sanders’ dream to play a full roster in the bowl game would remain a far-fetched reality for most of the team, no matter what.

Deion Sanders made a promise to go full roster in the bowl game

Deion Sanders has always been a trendsetter in whatever he does. The iconic coach Prime’s latest exceptional take was to head to the bowl game with all the kids on the team. Coach Prime wants to set an example to the rest of the CFB schools that NFL allurement or the transfer portal intricacy doesn’t bother the stability of his team on a big day.

“Our kids are going to play in our bowl game because that’s what we signed up to do,” Sanders said during one of his media appearances a few weeks back. ”We’re going to finish. We’re not going to tap out because that throws off the structure of next season.”

He threw shades to the other teams, noting their past awful performances in the game, and ensured they would treat the bowl game with all their forces and weapons and the quintessential do-or-die mindset.

It remains to be seen how the collective urge to make some changes in the portal deadline impacts Coach Prime and the other involved.