Texas A&M Aggies' Mike Elko Calls For Order Amid Transfer Portal Chaos

The Texas A&M Aggies and college football as a whole are dealing with a troubling predicament right now.

Jon Alfano | 9 Hours Ago

Nov 30, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko reacts during the second half against the Texas Longhorns. The Longhorns defeated the Aggies 17-7. at Kyle Field. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images / Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

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Texas A&M Aggies

The current state of college football resembles the Wild West, and Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko has some opinions about it.

With the transfer portal open during the postseason, teams are essentially powerless as their rosters get ripped apart bit-by-bit. Even teams in the College Football Playoff aren't immune to this. Penn State Nittany Lions backup quarterback recently made waves by entering the portal ahead of his team's CFP opener on Saturday, claiming that "The overlapping CFB playoff & transfer portal timeline has forced me into an impossible decision."

Many coaches have spoken out about the difficulties this portal window presents, and Elko, who's seen several of his players leave before the Aggies' bowl game, became the latest to do so on Tuesday.

"It is for sure crazier than it's ever been," Elko said. "I think now more than ever, this sport needs somebody to step in and create some type of rules and regulations. I'm all for the portal. I'm all for NIL. I have zero problems managing either one of those situations. I think there is an awful lot of unregulated bad stuff going on right now throughout all of this. It's going to impact young people and young people's futures.

"Probably now more than ever, I think coaches are just crying out for somebody to step in and just regulate this thing at some level so that we all understand the rules, we all understand what's going on. There's so many easy solutions that we could get into, but somebody needs to do it, and they need to do it fast."

The portal is tricky to manage for a number of reasons, but the differences between the academic and athletic calendar are chief among them. From an academic perspective, it makes sense to have the portal open in December to allow players to start spring classes on time. From an athletic perspective, or at least a football perspective, opening the portal at this time just leads to pure chaos.

It's a tricky problem to navigate, and if any solutions are to come, then Elko wants to be on a national level.

"Well, I think the challenge you have is, I love [SEC commissioner] Greg [Sankey], and Greg's a tremendous leader for the SEC, but whatever regulations Greg puts in, if nobody can follow suit or you can't create uniform legislation throughout college football, then you're actually putting us [at a disadvantage]," Elko said. "You know what I mean? So it's not like you can't go to Greg and say, 'Hey, we'd like to do this in the SEC only', and then all of a sudden. It has to be across the board. It has to be national legislation, and just right now, there's just none of it."