Steve Sarkisian addresses potential changes coming to recruiting calendar

A big topic at the 2024 SEC spring meetings was the recruiting calendar and its juxtaposition with the NCAA transfer portal during the winter months.

Frankly, the current timing makes things incredibly difficult on a lot of coaches. They have to prepare their team for a bowl game or the playoffs, worry about players transferring out of their program, try to find quality players in the transfer portal to bring into their program, play a game and sign a full class of high school prospects. Not necessarily in that order.

Many coaches are watching carefully to see if proposed changes to the recruiting calendar come about.

“I’m always curious about our recruiting calendar, because there’s been so many adjustments and changes to our recruiting calendar over the last, I guess 24 months of when we can call, when we can’t call, when we can do school visits, when we can do in-home visits, to when are signing days and when are dead periods,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “So I’m hopeful, I think we’re trying to make progress there.

“But I’m hopeful that we’re continually trying to keep in mind of all parties involved: the student-athletes, the assistant coaches, of what it looks like to ensure that we’re doing it not just the easy way but probably what’s the best way for our future.”

One proposal that many coaches seem to favor is keeping the NCAA transfer portal closed until after the early signing period for high school prospects has come and gone.

The trick is doing striking that balance with the recruiting calendar without shrinking the portal window so much that players have a hard time making a move given the timeline of semesters ending and beginning.

Still, it’s an idea that has a lot of coaching support.

“I would prefer that. It’s a lot (right now),” Sarkisian said. “I think one thing that I learned for myself a year ago being a head coach in the College Football Playoff — I’ve been in the playoff before as an assistant — but being a head coach it definitely got challenging as you’re trying to do in-home visits with high school kids in December but yet you’ve got players populating the portal at the same time and we’re still trying to go compete for a national championship. So you’re trying to gameplan and we’ve got our own team that we’re trying to work with.”

Sarkisian just wants to see things on the recruiting calendar broken up a bit more so you can handle one thing, then move on to the next when the time comes. Trying to juggle several balls all at once has proven complicated.

“If we could compartmentalize that a little bit I think that would be healthy not only for us as coaches, but I think giving the high school players their opportunity, because I do think a lot of those kids at the end maybe lost scholarships because they thought they were going to a school but in the end School A saw a kid get in the portal, they took him instead of the high school kid,” Sarkisian said. “So if we can can compartmentalize that a little bit I think it would be helpful.”