MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — In an SEC spring meetings setting heavily dominated by talks of an eight- or nine-game conference schedule and the College Football Playoff, Georgia football coach Kirby Smart strayed from the pack.

The former Alabama football assistant under Nick Saban thinks the “biggest decision that has to be made in college football right now by far, to me, by far” lies in with the NCAA transfer portal: whether there should be one or two windows, and when those windows would be.

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“That’s not being decided by us today,” Smart said. “A lot of people don’t even know how it’s getting decided, who’s deciding it.”

Currently, college football has two transfer portal windows. The first lasts through much of December after conference championship weekend, and one shortly after the conclusion of spring practices in April.

Alabama AD Greg Byrne shares Smart’s concern. But he shared his concern by highlighting what the Crimson Tide football program was able to do this spring.

“From my lens, one (transfer portal window) still gives the opportunity, and then it helps slow that down,” Byrne said. “Back to coach (Kalen) DeBoer, the fact that we were the only SEC program to not have anyone go in the portal in the spring. Other schools had small numbers, but that says a lot about what’s going on in the walls of your program when you have that.”

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The timing of the window, Byrne said, is where difficulties lie. While he would prefer a window in January, he said he doesn’t like either option of the portal window coming either in the middle of the CFP postseason, or later in January when academic semesters have already begun.

“Is the transfer portal going to go away? No,” Byrne said. “But does it make sense to have a little better definition, maybe shrinking it down to one window could be beneficial.”

Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: What Alabama AD Greg Byrne agrees with Georgia football Kirby Smart about