LSU's Lane Kiffin Rips CFB Transfer Portal, 'Out of Control... It's Just a Bad System'

LSU head coach Lane Kiffin has benefited greatly from the transfer portal over the years, but that's not stopping him from expressing a need for change.

"There are some good parts of it as a first-year coach when you come in, and you've got to add some pieces," he said Saturday on the LSU Radio Network (via Glenn Guilbeau of Tiger Rag). "And so the portal is a good thing in that way. But in general, it's gotten out of control. It's not good for college football. Something's got to be fixed.

"Everybody around the country is just going in, and the portal's not even open yet. Our coaches today were saying, 'All these guys are in.' I'm like, 'It's not even open. They're not in. They're just leveraging this.' So, it's just a bad system."

Some fans will find Kiffin's comments a bit rich. Players can't officially enter the transfer portal until Jan. 2, but there's nothing stopping a head coach from leaving a school that's about to embark on a College Football Playoff run and taking a new job.

It's not exactly a big surprise that players are telegraphing their next move well before the portal opens, either.

"At 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 2, you're going to see people instantly commit," one agent said to ESPN's Max Olson. "Deals have to be made ahead of time."

Olson added that people around college football were making a comparison to NBA free agency.

One running joke every summer is that some NBA players agree to new contracts only minutes after they were permitted to do so. It strains credulity that they could come to a decision so quickly without informally contacting teams well ahead of time.

The same thing seems to be happening in college football.

The NCAA announced in October that the portal window will run from Jan. 2-16, nearly a month later than the old December start date. The move was intended to allow for coaches, particularly newly hired ones such as Kiffin, to have more time to settle in before they need to build a roster.

Instead, this is underscoring how new rules are irrelevant if schools aren't really following them.

"Agents are in daily communication with GMs and directors of player personnel about their clients and how much money they're seeking," Olson wrote. "Essentially, nothing is tampering because everything is tampering."

College football coaches, administrators and boosters have skirted the rules and tried to find loopholes since time immemorial.

Even if the NCAA or conference commissioners take Kiffin's advice and try to make the transfer portal more structured, the larger problem may remain.