now I was so busy bleeping out Dave Dorne and Ma Brown yesterday I barely talked about the players signing day used to be where recruiting ends now it's really where it begins Jason Jennings explores the power of the portal when the regular season ends roster management for college football teams goes into overdrive it's like you have this beautiful puzzle and you leave the room and you come back and there's 30 pieces missing and you don't know who took them and now you got to go find those pieces so we got to go find them is it a high school guy is it a junior college guy is it a portal guy an early Signing Day is now a mere weeks away after the regular season and we're still trying to do it with a large majority of high school players we really don't want to just go portal and and be transfers while coaches all prefer to sign high school players and develop them for four to five years you also have to recognize where your holes are where where you maybe it's a lack of depth this year we had several guys leave our team because they weren't playing enough and I get that when kids are leaving in year three then you have those freshmen those seniors on a gap and that's for us where the portal is really helpful is trying to figure out your depth and stagger the depth chart so that you don't go from senior to freshman NC State recently found their next starting quarterback through the portal quarterback Grayson Mcall from Coastal Carolina but not without a staff that had to stay on top of potential player movement last year we we felt completely unprepared for a lot of things that happen guys going to portal and on a lot cases when they become legal to recruit they've already got their top three schools for us it was more about figuring out all right well what are the kids that if they went in track them you know how are they doing out there and that's the reality you know and you can complain about it all you want or you can just adapt Jason Jennings WL Sports