Report: CCA approves earlier winter signing day, pushes back decision on third signing period

ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Wednesday that NCAA officials voted to move up the winter football signing day to earlier in December before the NCAA Transfer Portal opens. Thamel also reported that officials pushed back a vote on adding a third signing period to the football recruiting calendar, targeting an in-person meeting in June for the decision.

Last week, Thamel reported that officials — who were meeting in Indianapolis — were proposing changes that would result in three signing periods: the last Wednesday in June, the Wednesday following the regular season, as well as the first Wednesday in February.

In late February, The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach reported that the December Early Signing Period was expected to be moved up ahead of title games and the opening of the NCAA Transfer Portal.

Tom Wistrcill, the Big Sky commissioner who also serves as the chairman of the National Letter of Intent subcommittee, told The Athletic there have been “advanced discussions” about moving the early signing period to the Wednesday before conference championship weekend. In 2024, that would be Dec. 4.

By moving the early signing period up, it would allow coaches to lock in their early signees before the transfer portal window opens – a big topic of conversation this past December.

“The biggest reason we’re doing this is to clear up the football recruiting calendar so the signing period and the transfer portal don’t overlap,” Wistrcill told The Athletic. “The feedback we’ve received from all coaches is that December is a mess. Especially with the expansion of the CFP coming next year, that just creates more chaos in December. This should help.”

There have also been discussions about adding a summer signing period prior to athletes’ senior seasons – much like basketball’s calendar. That would be in either June or August and also give athletes another opportunity to sign NLIs.

In addition, Wistrcill told The Athletic the subcommittee discussed having transfer portal players sign NLIs. They cannot sign National Letters of Intent under the current rules.

Nick Saban previously pointed out problems with the Early Signing Period in the current calendar

The early signing period came about prior to the 2017-18 season and allowed recruits to sign their National Letters of Intent in December. But the calendar has been jam-packed over the last couple years with the transfer portal window now opening after the final College Football Playoff reveal. This past season, the final CFP top 25 came out Dec. 3 and the portal window opened the next day on Dec. 4. National Signing Day was just over two weeks later on Dec. 20.

In what turned out to be his final signing day press conference, former Alabama coach Nick Saban pointed out the issues with the current setup. He noted the Crimson Tide had to balance CFP preparation with the portal window open and finalizing the early signees.

“The whole recruiting process, when we had the early signing date years ago, we said this would be come the signing date,” Saban said. “Well, it also just moved the recruiting calendar up, like, six months, aight? So players visit in the summer time. That’s when most guys visit. We used to have tons of guys visit in January. We’ll have very few guys visiting in January. The whole thing is kind of pushed forward. I don’t know how to answer.

“There’s just a lot of things happening right now, aight, that kind of take our time and focus and attention — the game’s important, recruiting’s important our team’s important. We’re trying to manage our time the best that we can to do a good job in all those areas so that we can finish.”