The college football recruiting calendar is a nightmare. Mizzou can take advantage.

Dec 4, 2024 | Uncategorized

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Missouri v Mississippi State
Eli Drinkwitz and the Mizzou coaches can profit off of a crazy recruiting calendar this off-season. | Photo by Justin Ford/Getty Images

Many improvements are needed for how the recruiting and transfer portal works. For now, it works for Mizzou.

As the Tigers on-field football season comes to a close, the off-field season has already shifted into high gear. Despite having yet one more game to prepare for this year, flipping recruits from other schools, holding on to current commitments and putting out feelers on future transfer portal entrants has become the four-fold full-time duty for the Mizzou coaching staff now that December has struck.

With postseason preparation for 82 bowl and playoff-bound teams, early signing day for high school recruits and the opening (and closing) of the transfer portal all within the last month of the year, the college football calendar has become a true Frankenstein’s monster. By cramming in so much not-football into what should, or at least could be the most fun month of the college football season, the CFB powers-that-be are doing an extreme disservice to the game we all love. However, at least for this year, Eli Drinkwitz and Mizzou can take advantage.

Crammed calendar

December has been a stressful month for college football coaches dating back to 2017, when the NCAA first implemented the early signing period. At the time, the idea was to allow high school recruits who already knew where they wanted to go to sign early without having to endure two more months of recruiting hassles. A great idea initially, since the transfer portal became a free-for-all following the COVID-19 pandemic, the early signing period has become, in essence, the only signing period for high school recruits.

This is because coaches are providing extra pressure for high schoolers to sign ASAP to lock in that portion of their rosters for the following fall. The warning across the country from coaches is “you better sign now or there may not be a spot for you in February.” As sleazy as that sounds (and is) it’s understandable from a coach’s perspective because they also have to worry about recruiting the transfer portal to fill inevitable roster holes from current players choosing to leave.

This year, the tenuous calendar has been thrown into even more of a tailspin as the early signing period date has been moved up before the portal window even opens. Here’s a December 2024 timeline for recruiting:

  • Dec. 4: Early Signing Period opens
  • Dec. 6: Early Signing Period closes
  • Dec. 9: Transfer portal window opens
  • Dec. 28: Transfer portal window closes

In modern college football 62% of programs play in (at least one) postseason bowl or playoff game. That means 82 coaching staffs are burning the candles at both ends in December to close high school recruits, re-recruit their own rosters, and reach out to desirable portal entrants to attract them to their schools in the spring. All the while also preparing for a bowl game, or in the case of 12 of the top programs, an opportunity to chase a national championship.

That’s not to try and make you just feel bad for the coaches. After all, that’s what the money is for. This calendar is also bad for the athletes, especially those looking to enter the portal who’s teams are competing for playoff spots. Georgia corner back Julian Humphrey announced he would be leaving the team to enter the portal (on Dec. 9) despite his team competing for an SEC championship and a playoff spot.

While athletes on teams who make the playoffs will be granted a five-day portal window after their team loses (since that will most likely be after the portal window closes on Dec. 28,) that doesn’t give them much time at all to make such decisions. For Humphrey, who was a contributor for the Bulldogs’ defense all season, he clearly felt that he needed to act now to make sure he had a soft landing on his new team, rather than play out the season with a chance to earn a championship ring.

That sucks, not only for Humphrey, but for his Georgia teammates, coaches and fans. This isn’t to single out Humphrey, since he’s certainly not the only player to do this, but rather to highlight the issues with cramming all of this chaos into such a short amount of time.

Can Mizzou capitalize?

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: SEP 21 Vanderbilt at Missouri
The Tigers have benefited greatly from transfers like Chris McClellan. Can they capitalize in the portal again this year?

Despite these problems with the calendar, or actually because of them, the Mizzou program is primed to take advantage during this recruiting season. While the Tigers failed to meet their ultimate goal of making the playoff, they can bolster their chances of making it in future years at the expense of programs who will qualify this year.

There are only so many hours in a coach’s day. While Mizzou coaches will be working to prepare for whatever second-tier bowl game the Tigers will end up in this year, they will not be expected to put in the same level of game-planning hours for the Kohler Toilet Bowl as they would for a playoff match-up against a top 10 team. Coaches from programs who ARE in the playoff, however, will be spending 25 hours a day watching film and preparing their team for their match-up(s) throughout December and into January.

That preparation won’t begin until the playoff field is announced Sunday (following the early signing period) but it will begin prior to the transfer portal window opening on Dec. 9. Those programs who Mizzou has been and will continue to be in competition with on the field and on the recruiting trail, will have to sacrifice something when it comes to the time resources allocated in December. Chances are, those programs will sacrifice future gains in exchange for the opportunity for current success.

This is where Mizzou can make hay. As talented and experienced players begin jumping into the portal on Dec. 9, the Tigers will have plenty of time on their hands to reach out to the most coveted of those recruits, including the quarterbacks and defensive backs that Mizzou is in desperate need of landing this off-season. Stack that time up with a more-than-healthy NIL budget and an earned reputation for actually following through with promised NIL payments (something not every major program can boast) and the Tigers are primed to land key pieces for the 2025 season even when they are competing against other top programs.

This nightmare of a December calendar will hopefully be a (good) problem for Mizzou in future years. Having less time to recruit because you’re busy preparing to compete for a national championship is a challenge you can sign me up for right now. But in the meantime (or at least until the NCAA figures out how to fix it), the portal trees will be ripe for the picking come Monday for Mizzou.

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