Coaches mull rules tweaks on signing day, bowls

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A strong consensus of FBS coaches signaled support for several key rules changes in college football as the 2023 American Football Coaches Association conference wrapped Tuesday, with the potential for an earlier signing day, extended bowl eligibility and a reevaluation of limits on on-field coaches.

AFCA executive director Todd Berry said Tuesday’s meetings, which included about 40 FBS head coaches, largely centered on frustrations that schools playing by the rules on issues including tampering, sideline headset use and on-field contact for support staff were being hamstrung, while those who flouted the guidelines endured no serious repercussions.

“If we can’t enforce something or we won’t enforce something, then we probably don’t even need to have a discussion about the rules. For a long time, our coaches have been frustrated that we put in rules constantly … and what ends up happening is the only ones who end up getting penalized are the ones doing the right thing. A lot of things we look at right now as coaches, whether it be the transfer portal, NIL — who’s governing this thing right now is in question, and who’s going to enforce what’s out there? We all see and hear all these things that — a lot of them are scary and most of them are true.”

Tampering remained arguably the biggest hot-button issue for coaches, with Berry saying FBS coaches are nearly unanimous in believing there should be far more severe punishment for schools caught enticing athletes from other teams not yet in the transfer portal, including potential lifetime bans. The problem, however, is that proving tampering remains a nearly impossible task.

“With tampering, with analysts coaching — you can’t enforce it,” Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said. “And if you can’t enforce it, why have it?”

Berry also said there was energy behind adjusting the early signing period, possibly by as little as a week or two, but potentially eliminating the early signing period or moving it to the summer.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey noted his concerns with the existing signing day structure earlier this week, lamenting that the December signing day overlapped with the transfer portal and bowl prep to create an unworkable logjam that impacted team’s seasons. Sankey has advocated returning to a single signing date in early February, which college football had for years before introducing the December date.

“It’d be nice if the signing date was earlier and the portal [window] was right after that, instead of the chaos of doing both these things at the same time” Berry said. “… It’s so chaotic right now, where everyone’s pulling their hair out, including the student-athletes.”

Berry suggested the Monday after Thanksgiving or the first Wednesday in December as potential options and noted some coaches would like to move the signing day even earlier — possibly to the summer — but said that could create an issue with players changing their minds after the season. NC State coach Dave Doeren was among several coaches in favor of an open signing period — letting high school players sign at any time, so long as the school stayed under its cap of 85 scholarships.

One thing a change to an earlier signing day likely wouldn’t affect, Berry said, is the recent trend of head coaches being fired midseason. Berry said the rush to make coaching changes isn’t a result of placating high school recruiting classes, but rather the transfer portal.

Berry said coaches also are in favor of a rule change that would allow players to participate in bowl games without impacting their ability to redshirt, even if they’d already played in four games during the season. He said several teams were “very close” to canceling their bowl games this year because of roster depletion at certain positions because of opt-outs and the transfer portal.

The larger issues of NIL and the portal remain points of contention, and Tuesday’s meeting offered little in the way of solutions.

Those frustrations, Berry said, have largely been predictable, but the solutions remain difficult to find because of a strong disagreement about the vision for college athletics.

“There’s no question that NIL, the transfer portal — anybody who’s surprised by this was being very naive, because conceptually this was going to end up a pay-for-play,” Berry said. “You’ve turned this into a professional model, and I’d still like to keep it an academic model. Maybe those worlds are going to collide. The moment all this stuff happened it was bound to collide. You can’t have both. I’d like to protect the academic model.”