From the stands: It’s time to fix college football’s broken schedule

Attrition on a coaching staff happens at every level of football, and the best leaders usually view it as a sign of a healthy program. Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said back in December that his goal is to see his staff members achieve their dreams, knowing those bigger opportunities come because of the success they had with the Ducks.

But when that attrition takes place before the postseason has even started, it leaves fans wondering: why?

Well, don’t blame the coaches. Don’t blame the players moving on to new schools, either. Blame a convoluted college football calendar that pits those competing in the postseason up against eliminated teams trying to get a leg up on the next season.

That was the situation Oregon found itself in ahead of the College Football Playoff after both coordinators — Will Stein on offense and Tosh Lupoi on defense — accepted new jobs in the first week of December.

“That’s really hard to envision as a coach that’s going out and trying to join a new program and start a staff,” Lanning said before the Jan. 1 Orange Bowl. “It’s hard for players to understand what continuity looks like and where they are going to be. And to manage that with visits, the portal, everything else that exists.”

The transfer portal — which has basically become unregulated free agency — officially opened on Jan. 2, the day after Oregon beat Texas Tech to advance to the CFP semifinal. While teams like Oregon were still playing for a national title, much of the country had already moved on to shoring up their rosters in time for 2026 spring practice.

Players looking for a new home are doing what makes sense for them. Coaches leaving for bigger jobs are doing the same. Nobody is wrong for acting in their own interest. But during the playoff semifinals, this left Oregon with a roster thinned out by portal defections and two coaches juggling two jobs at the same time.

“I definitely wear two hats,” Stein said in the runup to a game Oregon lost 56-22.

The schedule didn’t help — and it’s not just a problem in Eugene.

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin departed for the same job at LSU just before the Rebels’ playoff run. Oregon’s first-round playoff opponent, James Madison, had a head coach with a job-in-waiting at UCLA. Teams all over the playoffs had players sitting out the postseason with plans to enter the transfer portal. It’s a messy and inconvenient process that’s hard enough for teams to deal with even when they’re not in the postseason — and the compressed January timeline only raises the temperature. 

In Seattle, Washington was held hostage in early January by the will he/won’t he of quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who announced he was returning to school, then entered the portal — only to turn around and recommit to Washington after UW threatened to sue.

“Everything in college football is decided by a lawsuit-by-lawsuit basis at the moment,” said Beck Parsons, a contributor to The Husky Haul who covered Williams Jr.’s recent situation. “There’s a huge lack of clarity.”

That’s not good for the sport. And it’s definitely not sustainable.

Replacing self-interested conference commissioners with a centralized leadership system focused on the overall health of college football could finally cure the sport’s perpetual disruption. 

There are many problems at the moment, but reorganizing the schedule to find a solution that makes the most sense for the players, coaches and fans around the country would be a start. 

The regular season should be quickly followed by the playoffs. Everything else that belongs in the offseason — signing day, the transfer portal, the coaching carousel — needs to wait its turn.

John Evans is a senior journalism student at the University of Oregon and a contributing football writer for 247Sports.com. Have a sports opinion that needs to be heard? Share your view from the stands to Tyson Alger at tyson@lookoutlocal.com