Oregon Coach Advocates for January 1 Season End to Optimize Athletics Calendar
Eugene, Thursday, 1 January 2026.
Oregon’s Dan Lanning identifies a critical market inefficiency: the postseason’s collision with the transfer portal. He proposes a hard January 1 season deadline to stabilize the industry’s chaotic labor dynamics.
Systemic Calendar Misalignment
The core of Lanning’s argument rests on the inefficiency of the current scheduling architecture, which extends the 2025-2026 season through the College Football Playoff (CFP) title game on January 19, 2026 [1][6]. This timeline creates a substantial overlap with the industry’s labor market, as the transfer portal and coaching carousel accelerate well before the championship is decided. Lanning notes that the extended schedule makes it “really hard to envision as a coach that’s going out and trying to join a new program and start a staff,” highlighting the friction between finishing a current season and preparing for the next fiscal year of recruiting and hiring [3]. This structural flaw forces programs to operate in a state of dual loyalty, managing high-stakes playoff games while simultaneously navigating significant personnel turnover.
Proposed Market Corrections
To resolve these inefficiencies, Lanning proposes a condensed postseason model where playoff games are contested on consecutive weekends, ensuring the season concludes by January 1 [3][6]. Under this restructured calendar, the transfer portal would open strictly after the championship game, creating a clear demarcation between competitive play and labor mobility [1]. Ole Miss Head Coach Pete Golding noted the difficulties of the current timeline, where transfer opportunities effectively begin as early as January 2, regardless of a team’s playoff status [1]. Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart bolstered this critique, arguing that the existing system “inherently rewards what defies a team concept” by incentivizing players and staff to prioritize individual career moves over collective postseason goals [1].