Mike Elko Discusses Importance Of One Key Aspect of the Transfer Portal Window

With the first year of the new one-time transfer portal window in the rearview mirror, teams are now reflecting on the ups and downs of the 15-day period.

In the four years since the transfer portal’s introduction, waves of controversy have swept across college football. The portal introducing a kind of “free agency” into the sport formed a gray area, causing coaches, players, analysts and fans to grapple with how to prioritize both player and program development.

For context, when the portal originally opened in 2021, it was based off of a one-time, year-round rule in which player requests at any moment in the season were granted on a largely unregulated basis. The year after, windows were introduced to slow the carousel down — 45 days in the winter and 15 days in the spring. In 2023-24, those windows were increasingly shortened, while in 2024-25, the NCAA suspended the one-time rule due to a series of court rulings, which allowed a lot of chaos with in-season transfers. In 2026, the one-time, Jan. 2-16 window came into existence.

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko and Co. have capitalized well off the new window, adding 18 incoming transfers to the roster before the spring offseason hits. In his first media availability of the new year, Elko discussed coaching staff hires and the offseason, but had plenty to say about the implications of the singular period.

What Mike Elko Has to Say About the New One-Time Window

Elko is highly in favor of the new window and its process, as he plainly stated Monday afternoon. For Elko, the one-time period increases the productivity of the program while trying to prepare for the upcoming season and reduces complications with player agency.

“Tremendously in favor of it,” Elko said. “Never ever like the idea of two free agent windows, especially now when you talk about (revenue) share caps and salary cap management to some degree.”

Past methods of the transfer portal, especially with two separate windows in December and April, resulted in a kind of free agency for players that became extremely detrimental to teams trying to retain players. While that free agency still exists in some capacity, with just under 1,000 players still floating in the portal looking for a new university to play for, athletes are no longer able to join a program for winter training and leave just months later again.

That kind of free agency led several schools, including Texas A&M, Nebraska and Texas, to cancel spring showcase football games in 2025 due to a fear of excessive tampering. With the one-time window now in place, programs are opening up spring football games again. Tampering, of course, will never go away — the drama between Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Ole Miss’ Pete Golding is the most famous current example — but a one-time window in January significantly reduces it.

“We’ll never get rid of tampering, but if it’s not 45 days a year of open windows to leave, if it’s not these long periods of time where kids are gonna get pulled in different directions by a bunch of different people, the more we can reduce the amount of windows, the amount of days, to just let kids declare their intentions based on what they actually want to do, I think the better it is for kids, I think the better it is for the sport,” Elko said. “So I think it’s all trending in the right direction that way.”

With significant improvements on the defensive front and offensive line via incoming transfers, Texas A&M can solidly say that it benefited extremely well from the portal. The Aggies left the window ranked No. 10 nationally by ESPN writer Craig Haubert’s rankings of transfer class grades, and the class features several immediate starters that could make big impacts during the upcoming season.

“We felt it was just important for us to just go out and get some experienced competition to bring into that group,” Elko said. “I think we were able to do that.”