TWO OF THE most hectic months of Brian Kelly’s coaching career were this past November and December.
On Dec. 3, LSU played in the SEC championship game. Two days later, the transfer portal opened. He had to prepare for the Tigers’ bowl game, create a strategy for the portal — between his own players entering and players he coveted — and finish off the 2023 recruiting cycle all at once.
“The real key here was, how can we build in during the month of December an opportunity to try to do all three of those things without them overlapping?” Kelly told ESPN.
The transfer portal, a database that allows coaches to contact student-athletes who wish to transfer, has become a staple of the college football landscape since it launched in fall 2018.
In the 2018-19 cycle, there were 2,405 NCAA football players that entered the portal, according to ESPN Stats & Information. That number skyrocketed to 5,592 players last year and to 6,202 from August 2022 through January 2023. This past December alone, 2,729 people entered the portal.
The NCAA enacted transfer portal windows for the 2022-23 academic year to try to regulate when players were allowed to enter the portal: a 45-day window from Dec. 5 to Jan. 18 and a second 15-day window that runs from April 15 to 30.
But while the windows were intended to add structure, many coaches and personnel directors from various conferences said dealing with the continuous balancing act of the portal, recruiting classes and bowl preparations, all during the holiday season, made for too much at once.
“December makes for an interesting time,” Florida State personnel director Derek Yray said, “and I don’t necessarily know what the answer is to it.”
With the spring portal window opening Saturday, coaches spoke to ESPN about how difficult navigating the first window was, the concerns they have about the calendar and what should change going forward.
PRIOR TO THE transfer windows, student-athletes could enter their name in the portal whenever they wanted. That led to players transferring right before or during the season, and without any safeguards from knowing when a player could transfer, it became increasingly harder for coaches to manage their own rosters.
Enter the transfer windows, which brought a mix of definition and chaos to the process.
Retaining a team’s own roster has been a major piece to the puzzle that has coaches and personnel directors concerned. Penn State personnel director Andy Frank said the windows indirectly encouraged people to watch opposing rosters closely during the season to evaluate which players could help their own future rosters.
He also said the windows shut down the entire recruiting and scouting departments while they also tried to balance the early signing period (Dec. 21-23) for high school recruits. Rather than having only prospects on campus to visit, the staff was also hosting transfer visitors, scouring the portal to find players to help fill needs.
“We were in favor of there not being windows and I’d say coming out of it, I’d still be at that place,” Frank said. “I don’t know if I’m a fan of the windows, because one of the goals was to condense the process down into a smaller window of time. I actually think that causes more problems than it solves.”
Adding the transfer portal windows to the month of December, when recruiting, bowl season and the coaching carousel all come to a head, has made it more hectic than ever.
“You can end up in situations like we did,” said TCU coach Sonny Dykes, who coached the Horned Frogs to their first College Football Playoff berth. “We had five official visits the week of the national championship game and you’re trying to get ready for that game. At the same time, you’re hosting transfers and it’s just a very chaotic time for everybody.”
Yray said he was with Florida State coach Mike Norvell on the road during the month of December. “I think we hit about 13 states in eight days,” he said. Despite that, he liked having the window’s structure and thinks they served their purpose.
“December, you’re going to have to sacrifice somewhere no matter how much work you put into it,” Yray said. “So, I do like the windows that they’re defined, but I also think there’s a better way. I just don’t know what that necessarily is to make it work in December.”
SEC FOOTBALL COACHES met in mid-February to discuss a variety of topics from the year and tried to come up with mock solutions with the transfer portal, one of the highly contested subjects, Kelly said.
They came up with a hypothetical proposal that they felt made the most people happy: Teams would focus on their high school recruiting classes first and then move onto transfers. Kelly said some coaches don’t want transfer portal decisions to impact the incoming freshman class, so if they know which recruits they have coming in, they can use the transfer market to fill holes.
“We don’t want to move the signing date back any further because then you have visits and coaches working in July, so that was a nonstarter,” Kelly said. “We would stay with a December date, then maybe a couple of days later, that’s the transfer portal [window], and you get to work on that. So you put one behind you, then you get the next one in front of you and now you can manage those two things.”
One issue with that, Yray noted, was that while teams would know which incoming freshmen would sign, they wouldn’t know which players would be transferring out of their programs.
“I think you still have to know who’s leaving your roster before you sign those high school guys, or any of the transfer portal guys,” Yray said. “If you move the date of the transfer portal back, for us, we start class usually the first week of January. So, our ability to get them into school on time, so they can start on time and start workouts, that’s important for where the date currently is.”
Dykes added that the NCAA rules put in place were initially geared toward making graduation more accommodatable for athletes, especially when it comes to transferring over academic credits — “It’s not like we wave a magic wand and all the sudden a kid is in school,” Frank said — and enrolling in classes at their new schools.
“All of the sudden it switched, overnight really, and you don’t hear anybody talking about graduation anymore,” Dykes said. “So, I do think that we’ve got to study these things and make sure that we’re doing the best thing for the student-athletes, because in some cases we feel like we are, but we’re not if these guys aren’t graduating.”
Another option could be changing the recruiting calendar if the NCAA leaves the portal windows the same. After all, the early signing period has been around only since 2017. Yray and Frank both mentioned the idea of implementing a rolling signing period, which would start at a certain point in high school but would allow a prospect to sign whenever they had a committable offer.
“The problem with the later you go with that is, whenever the first date is that you can sign, that is going to become the signing day,” Frank said. “We saw it with the early signing period, right? We call it the early signing period, but that’s the signing period now because it’s the earliest they can do it.”
A 12-team playoff is coming in 2024, and while its format is set, what the schedule will look like is unclear. The broader college football landscape is ever changing, and the calendar is just one thing that is impacted.
Some coaches believe the NCAA is headed for a collision course with antiquated rules and a changing atmosphere. Some believe the way to avoid disaster is to blow it all up and rework the rules altogether.
“We need to start over and say, ‘Hey, these are the pillars,’ and we have to look at it very holistically,” Frank said. “I think the thing that’s holding up wholesale changes, which I think eventually will happen, is I think we’re heading towards collective bargaining in some form or fashion. What it looks like, I don’t know, but I think we’re heading towards it, and once we figure that piece out, you rework the whole calendar and start over.”
Missouri quarterback Drew Pyne has entered the portal as a graduate transfer, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
Pyne is looking to move to his fourth school after stints at Notre Dame, Arizona State and Missouri. He’ll be a sixth-year senior this fall.
Pyne joined Missouri last year as a backup for senior starter Brady Cook. He earned one start, leading the Tigers to a 30-23 comeback win over Oklahoma while Cook was sidelined by ankle and wrist injuries.
Missouri brought in former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribulavia the transfer portal this offseason. He’ll compete with redshirt junior Sam Horn and true freshman Matt Zollers, the No. 86 overall recruit in the 2025 ESPN 300, for the opportunity to start this season.
Pyne, a former ESPN 300 recruit, began his career at Notre Dame and started 10 games for the Fighting Irish in 2022. He threw for 2,021 yards on 65% passing and scored 24 total touchdowns with six interceptions while winning eight of his starts.
After the Irish brought in grad transfer quarterback Sam Hartman, Pyne transferred to Arizona State but appeared in just two games with the Sun Devils before an injury forced him to sit out the rest of the season.
Pyne played 211 snaps over six appearances for the Tigers last season and threw for 391 yards on 60% passing with three touchdowns and three interceptions.
The NCAA’s spring transfer window opens April 16, but graduate transfers are permitted to put their name in the portal at any time. More than 160 FBS scholarship quarterbacks have already transferred this offseason.
There are slow starts, there are slumps, and then there is whatever Rafael Devers is going through.
The 28-year-old three-time All-Star for the Boston Red Sox has been one of baseball’s best hitters since 2019, posting three 30-homer seasons, three 100-RBI seasons and a whole bunch of doubles.
His first five games of 2025 have been a nightmare. It’s the early-season equivalent of dealing Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Johnny Pesky holding the ball. Bucky Dent. The ball rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs. Aaron Boone. Just to name a few Red Sox references. Here’s how those games unfolded for Devers:
Game 1: 0-for-4, three strikeouts Game 2: 0-for-4, four strikeouts Game 3: 0-for-4, three strikeouts, walk, RBI Game 4: 0-for-4, two strikeouts, walk Game 5: 0-for-3, three strikeouts, two walks
He became the first player to strike out 12 times in a team’s first four games. And, yes, with 15 strikeouts through five games he shattered the old record of 13, shared by Pat Burrell in 2001 and Byron Buxton in 2017. Going back to the end of 2024, when Devers fanned 11 times over his final four games, he became the fourth player with multiple strikeouts in nine straight games — and one of those was a pitcher (the other two were a rookie named Aaron Judge in 2016 and Michael A. Taylor in 2021).
With Devers struggling, the Red Sox have likewise stumbled out of the gate, going 1-4 after some lofty preseason expectations, including an 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the home opener Monday. To be fair, it’s not all on Devers: Jarren Duran, Devers and Alex Bregman, the top three hitters in the lineup, are a combined 11-for-62 (.177) with no home runs.
But there is one question weighing heaviest on the minds of Red Sox Nation right now: What is really going on with Devers?
It’s easy to say his head simply isn’t in the right space. Devers made headlines early in spring training after the Red Sox signed Bregman, saying he didn’t want to move to DH and that “third base is my position.” He pointed out that when he signed his $331 million extension in January of 2023, the front office promised he would be the team’s third baseman.
That, however, was when a different regime was in charge. Bregman, a Gold Glove winner in 2024, is the better defensive third baseman, so it makes sense to play him there and move Devers — except many players don’t like to DH. Some analysts even build in a “DH penalty,” assuming a player will hit worse there than when he plays the field. While Devers eventually relented and said he’d do whatever will help the team, it was a rocky situation for a few weeks.
But maybe it’s something else. While Devers avoided surgery this offseason, he spent it trying to rebuild strength in both shoulders after dealing with soreness and inflammation throughout 2024. He didn’t play the field in spring training and had just 15 plate appearances. So maybe he is still rusty — or the shoulder(s) are bothering him.
Indeed, Statcast metrics show his average bat speed has dropped from 72.5 mph in 2024 to 70.3 mph so far in 2025 (and those are down from 73.4 mph in 2023). His “fast-swing rate” has dropped from 34.2% in 2023 to 27.9% to 12.2%. Obviously, we’re talking an extremely small sample size for this season, but it’s clear Devers isn’t generating the bat speed we’re used to seeing from him.
That, however, doesn’t explain the complete inability to make contact. Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters after the series in Texas that Devers had made alterations with his foot placement — but was having trouble catching up to fastballs. Following Monday’s game, Devers told reporters (via his interpreter) that, “Obviously this is not a position that I’ve done in the past. So I need to get used to it. But I feel good, I feel good.”
Which leads to this question: Does this historic bad start mean anything? Since the DH began in 1973, three DHs began the season with a longer hitless streak than Devers’ 0-for-19 mark, so let’s dig into how the rest of their seasons played out:
Don Baylor with the 1982 Angels (0-for-20). Baylor ended up with a pretty typical season for him: .263/.329/.424, 24 home runs.
Evan Gattis of the 2015 Astros (0-for-23). Gattis hit .246 with 27 home runs — not as good as he hit in 2014 or 2016, but in line with his career numbers.
Curtis Terry with the Rangers in 2021 (0-for-20). Terry was a rookie who ended up playing just 13 games in the majors.
Expanding beyond just the DH position, I searched Baseball-Reference for players in the wild-card era (since 1995) who started a season hitless in at least 20 plate appearances through five games. That gave us a list of … just seven players, including Evan Carter (0-for-22) and Anthony Rendon (0-for-20) last season. Both ended up with injury-plagued seasons. The list also includes Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who was 0-for-24 for the Houston Astros in 1995. He was fine: He hit .302/.406/.483 that season, made the All-Star team and finished 10th in the MVP voting. J.D. Drew started 0-for-25 through five games with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005; he hit .286/.412/.520, although an injury limited him to 72 games.
But none of those hitters struck out nearly as often as Devers has.
So let’s focus on the strikeouts and expand our search to most strikeouts through the 15 first games of a season. Given his already astronomical total, Devers is likely to rank high on such a list even if he starts making more contact. Seventeen players struck out at least 25 times through 15 games, topped by Yoan Moncada and Miguel Sano with 29, both in 2018. Not surprisingly, all these seasons have come since 2006 and 12 since 2018.
How did that group fare?
They were actually OK, averaging a .767 OPS and 20 home runs. The best of the group was Matt Olson in 2023, who struck out 25 times in 15 games, but was also hitting well with a .317/.423/.650 line. He went on to hit 53 home runs. The next best season belongs to Giancarlo Stanton in 2018, his first with the Yankees. He finished with 38 home runs and an .852 OPS — but that was a big drop from his MVP season in 2017, when he mashed 59 home runs. His strikeout rate increased from 23.6% in 2017 to 29.9% — and he’s never been as good.
Indeed, that’s the worrisome thing for Devers: Of the 16 players who played the season before (Trevor Story was a rookie in 2016 when he struck out 25 times in 15 games, albeit with eight home runs), 13 had a higher OPS the previous season, many significantly so.
As Cora argued Monday, it’s a small sample size. “You know, this happens in July or August, we’d not even be talking about it,” he said.
That doesn’t really sound quite forthright. A slump, even a five-game slump, with this many strikeouts would absolutely be a topic of discussion. Still, that’s all the Red Sox and Devers have to go on right now: It’s just a few games, nothing one big game won’t fix. They just hope it comes soon.
Last season with the Cardinals, he started 23 games and had a 7-4 record with a 3.84 ERA, throwing 117⅓ innings and striking out 109.
The two-time All-Star has a career record of 143-99 with a 3.74 ERA in 364 games (340 starts), tossing 2,006⅓ innings. He ranks sixth in that category, as well as in wins, among active pitchers. Ahead of him in each category are three sure Hall of Famers — Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw.
Lynn, on Tuesday, made it clear that he may be spotted on the baseball field … just not in a major league game.
“There might be something a little fun around the corner upcoming weekend, so stayed tuned,” Lynn said. “But from Major League Baseball, I am done pitching.”