Neal Brown Becomes Latest College Football Coach to Criticize December Calendar
The college football calendar has been a topic of conversation for years, as the timing of national signing day, in-home visits for coaches, and the postseason bowl schedule have long been points of contention.
However, this 2023-24 calendar has proven especially taxing on the coaches and players involved. The month of December has morphed into a perpetual state of insomnia for coaching staffs, something that simply cannot be sustained.
On top of preparing for a bowl game that lurks at the end of the month, coaches have to schedule in-home visits with players across the country, perform end-of-year evaluations with players currently on the roster, manage their rosters with the transfer portal opening on December 4, evaluate players that are becoming available via the portal, manage their signing classes for early signing day on December 20, hire/fire members of the coaching staff… you get the picture.
There is simply too much going on in the month of December for coaching staffs to keep up, and they’ve been vocal about it. The latest to do so was West Virginia head coach Neal Brown.
“I’ll put it this way … our game has a lot of issues,” Brown said at his Duke’s Mayo Bowl press conference. “The product is still great. People are going to tune into these bowl games and they will have high ratings. The CFP will still have high ratings. It’s one of the highest spectator sports, if not the highest. But we have some issues and we have to figure it out.”
The issue that college football is dealing with is it currently revolves around the academic calendar. However, the sport and its academic counterpart haven’t meshed well in years, leading to a series of disjointed and hectic conclusions to each football season.
“Think about it,” Brown said. “We have a professional model but we’re still operating on an academic calendar. The two worlds are so different. We have to figure out some solutions. I don’t have one right now.”
One glaring example of this is Texas quarterback Maalik Murphy, who had to enter the transfer portal despite his team preparing for a College Football Playoff game against Washington.
“Think about the quarterback leaving Texas [Maalik Murphy],” Brown said. “He’s having to make a decision to leave right in the middle of the CFP and I get it. He’s trying to secure a new home…
“You have guys who go in the portal and you know your roster numbers. I’m sure, after the bowl game, we’ll have a few more. I don’t know how many. The assumption is we’ll have a few more. So, trying to figure out the exact number of high school players to take and the exact number of portal players to take are moving targets at all times. Now, you add a second transfer period into this, you are basically saying everyone is a free agent every time the portal opens.
“Good luck.”
While coaches are certainly paid well for their time at the FBS level, the process by which they live their lives through the off-season months has become more chaotic than the in-season calendar, and that simply cannot continue.
“I’ll say this, too. I think fans suffer because of it but to the general public, it’s not an issue because the product is still good,” Brown says. “Nobody gives a [expletive] if the coaches’ lives stink. We are well compensated and all that kind of stuff, but it’s not a good process. We have to figure something out.”
Brown and the West Virginia Mountaineers will take on North Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Wednesday, December 27, with kickoff scheduled at 5:30 p.m. ET.
