High-profile college football coach says major change needed to national championship game

There's no question or debate that college football faces a scheduling quagmire from several standpoints.

The sport has moved the early signing period, when the overwhelming majority of recruits put pen to paper and lock in their college decisions, to this Wednesday, while many schools just hired new head coaches in the last couple of days, and some, like Penn State, still don't have a coach in place to close out or rally a recruiting class.

Then there is the matter of coaching changes happening before the College Football Playoff. The most awkward situation, of course, is Lane Kiffin leaving an 11-1, top-10 Ole Miss team for LSU and now not coaching the Rebels in the playoffs, but head coaches for potential playoffs teams like James Madison, North Texas and Tulane and Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein have also already taken other jobs (but will finish out their current seasons).

That may be a harder issue to resolve, as schools will fire and hire coaches on their own schedule regardless.

But then there is the pending transfer portal window ...

In the past, the transfer portal opened in December and again in April for players to make decisions about leaving their current schools/programs. Now, there is just one transfer portal window set for Jan. 2-16, but that still falls right in the middle of the College Football Playoff schedule with the semifinals set for Jan. 8-9 and the national championship game Jan. 19.

So, the coaches of the four semifinalists will have to start making decisions on their 2026 rosters while preparing for the biggest games of their seasons.

Players on the two teams that reach the national title game will get extra time (Jan. 20-24) to enter the portal, but the reality is that the rest of college football is going to be hosting and locking up transfers during those previous two weeks to secure their top targets and get players enrolled by the semester cut-off.

Which means the coaches of the playoff finalists will have to be doing the same, gauging how many of their own players they might lose, which spots need to be filled, etc., while gameplanning and practicing.

Ohio State coach Ryan Day, for one, said "that doesn't make any sense" after the new transfer portal window was set.

Another coach, meanwhile, has a strong suggestion for how to solve at least that matter.

"There's only, in my opinion, one way to fix all of this," USC coach Lincoln Riley said. "You gotta have the national championship game somewhere around Christmas to New Year's. That's the only way it's going to work because you've got three things that are competing right now.

USC HC Lincoln Riley weighed in on the current CFB calendar:

“There's only, in my opinion, one way to fix all of this. You’ve got to have the national championship game somewhere around Christmas to New Year’s. That's the only way it's going to work.” pic.twitter.com/olji0GN9xo
— Keely Eure (@keelyismyname) December 2, 2025

"You have high schools finishing their year/signing day/the high school calendar. You have college academic calendars [with] people getting in and out, you have semesters and quarter systems, all different calendars there. And then you have a college football season, and then you have the different roster decisions that are having to happen. ...

"To me, that's the only way it's ever going to get fixed -- you've got to move the national championship game, and obviously you're going to have to make adjustments to a season to be able to play out a full season. Do you reduce games? People are going to have to figure that out. But this will not get fixed until that happens. You're going to always sacrifice something until that happens, and that will be the decision makers to make."

Riley has a point. That won't change the chaos that comes from coaching moves overlapping with signing day, but it would alleviate a lot of the issues surrounding the transfer portal.