Wait so the portal window is the only game in town now and nobody is talking about what that actually means for how programs like ours have to operate? The spring window got eliminated starting 2026 and now all those moves happen in the winter dead period. That changes everything about roster construction and I mean everything. No more scrambling to plug holes after spring practice reveals what you actually have. No more coaches using the spring evaluation period to identify needs and then panic-buying in May. You either get your roster right in December and January or you ride with what you have for the entire season.
And for a program like ours sitting where we are in the 2027 class rankings it makes the portal strategy even more critical. We cannot afford to whiff on high school recruiting and then just assume we can fix it in the spring portal like some programs used to do. The winter window is now the only window. That means every single roster decision from December trough February carries massive weight. One bad evaluation on a portal target and you are stuck with that hole for nine months.
I keep circling back to what Oklahoma State is doing with 50 portal guys under Eric Morris and wondering if that approach even works when you only get one shot at it in the winter. Colorado brought in 43 and we still do not know if that model produces wins or just chaos. The old system let you hedge your bets. You could take a flier on a high school kid in February and if he did not pan out in spring ball you had May to find a replacement. That safety net is gone now.
The staff has to be thinking about this differently than they did even two years ago. Every scholarship offer to a portal kid has to be a near-certain hit because there is no do-over. And with NIL budgets getting capped at 20.5 million per school under the new revenue-sharing model you cannot just throw money at every hole either. The margin for error in roster building just got razor thin.