James Franklin pitches transfer portal changes to improve college football

Late last season, Penn State head coach James Franklin was dealt the unenviable task of balancing what’s best for his program, and what’s best for backup quarterback Beau Pribula.

Facing an uncertain future with veteran Nittany Lions’ starting QB Drew Allar returning for the 2025 season, Pribula elected to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal in mid-December, just as Franklin and Penn State were preparing for the program’s first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. Pribula committed to Missouri a week after entering the portal after inking a seven-figure NIL deal, according to On3’s Pete Nakos.

Penn State’s situation raised a lot of red flags for college football coaches and administrators, and helped spark renewed focus on amending when the NCAA Transfer Portal window is officially open after the Division I Council approved two windows for football last October. The first window opens for 20 days beginning the Monday after conference championship weekend, with the second window opening for 10 days in Spring. This year’s Spring window will be open April 16-25, just as Spring practice wraps up.

For his part, Franklin is in favor of a single portal window opening in late Spring, which is gaining steam among coaches fed up with practicing with players during Spring only for them to enter the portal and play for another program in the Fall.

James Franklin: AFCA in favor of single tranfer portal window

“I think the conversations that I’ve heard in the Big Ten, the conversations that I’ve been apart of with the AFCA – the American Football Coaches Association – is I think everybody thinks the best model is to have one transfer portal (window) and have it after the Spring,” Franklin said on Tuesday’s episode of Andy & Ari On3 with Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman. “That would allow everybody to get through their season. It’ll allow you to have one academic calendar. And then there’s been some talk about maybe moving Spring football more into the Summer, like (the NFL’s) OTA model. So now your roster is completely set and you can get some practices in leading up to training camp and start getting prepared. Because there are going to be a lot of programs that are going to be practicing a ton of guys during Spring ball who are not even going to be apart of their roster come the Fall.”

Of course, a single portal window in the Spring could severely limit the potential for players like Pribula to find transfer opportunities where they could compete for a starting job in the Spring/Summer before preseason camp gets underway in the Fall.

“It really should be looked at holistically. Coaches shouldn’t be thinking about it just from their program’s perspective, I think that’s what got us into this mess in the first place, when coaches were denying players being able to transfer from one school to another,” Franklin continued. “But we went from one extreme to the other, and more times than not you’d love for the pendulum to even back out. And right now that has not happened and I don’t see it happening. I don’t think either extreme is in anybody’s best interests.”

Whether even more change is on the horizon for the transfer portal, one thing is clear, the current format creates the potential for even more chaos at the most inopportune time for college football programs. Case-in-point, Franklin suggested the very real scenario of Pribula entering the transfer portal only for Allar to go off in the Playoffs and cement himself as a Top 5 overall pick before ultimately declaring for the 2025 NFL Draft, which nearly happened before Allar opted to run it back with Penn State in 2025.

“That was a realistic concern for me and Drew, and his family, so that could’ve been even crazier,” Franklin added. “Especially after how he played in the Big Ten Championship game against Oregon, played really well. … That was a major concern of mine.”