The transfer portal has become college football’s wild west, and now a former national championship coach and a U.S. Senator are teaming up to restore order. Senator Tommy Tuberville came up with the Student Athlete Act of 2026. The goal? To redefine eligibility standards and cut down the transfer portal activity.
The NCAA’s recent band-aids just aren’t cutting it. That’s why Tuberville’s push for federal intervention is drawing attention from heavy-hitters. Three-time national champion Urban Meyer has publicly thrown his weight behind the legislation, agreeing that the current portal structure makes building a program impossible.
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Tuberville knows the sidelines firsthand from his days running programs at Auburn, Ole Miss, and Texas Tech. His proposed bill slaps a hard five-year cap on a player’s eligibility. It gives athletes one penalty-free transfer, but if they try to jump ship a second time, they sit for a year.
“Transferring every year interrupts a student’s education and is bad for team morale,” said the Senator. “That’s why I’m introducing a bill that would allow student-athletes to transfer 1 time without penalty, no questions asked. After that, if you choose to transfer, you sit out a year. It’s simple.”
For Senator Tuberville, the current college football transfer portal policies resemble “unrestricted free agency rather than amateur competition.” To him, it came off as the athletes putting themselves on the market for $50,000 to $100,000, rather than signing into a program.
In order to bring some stability into the portal structure, the NCAA got rid of the spring portal, which was a popular option that more than 1,000 FBS players opted for last season. The authorities have been in favor of the 5-in-5 eligibility model brought by the senator. But they feared that it might follow lawsuits filed by the players denied their opportunity at a fifth season.
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So, rather than outright approving a fifth year, the AFCA dialed up a different play in January. The proposal to stretch participation from four games to nine feels like a strategic detour, one that quietly pushes the sport closer to a 5-in-5 model without even making it official.
In order to shield themselves from the transfer portal chaos, college football programs have adopted some safety measures. For instance, they now insert a very large buyout in their rev-share contracts. In that way, if a player decides to leave after one season, the program might be enduring lesser financial loss. But what about the time and the efforts invested in players who flipped before even playing for a year? It goes to waste.
For instance, this year, former California linebacker Luke Ferrelli hit the transfer portal and decided to head to Clemson. But after committing, Ole Miss crashed the party by slipping a text of a $1 million contract while he was attending an 8 a.m. class. Soon, he decided to hit the transfer portal again and signed up with Pete Golding’s program.
The wild west scenario is exactly why coaches like Urban Meyer are backing federal guardrails. Roster building has turned into a daily bidding war. When a program can lose a committed player to a text message overnight, maintaining team morale and developing long-term talent goes out of the window.
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Long before this bill surfaced, Tuberville had already tried to reshape the landscape. His 2023 partnership with Joe Manchin on the PASS Act promised change, but the proposal faded out. This time, taking care of all the loopholes, his bill was backed by former head coach Urban Meyer.
Urban Meyer doubles down on Senator Tommy Tuberville’s one-time transfer limit
The transfer portal has definitely helped high school players who fell off the radar to pitch themselves to blue-chip schools. At the same time, players who generally sought opportunities to develop themselves could find the program on the portal. But at the same time, it has also left programs volatile, for example, Clemson after losing Ferrelli. Senator Tuberville’s bill thus includes a year-in-residence, which leaves Meyer on the same wavelength.
“I think that there’s a big push in agreement that there should be a one-time. You get a one-time, not exempt. So, you can transfer one time, and then it’s over; you have to sit for a year if you transfer again,” said the former head coach on The Triple Option podcast.
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Meanwhile, the Senator already discussed the bill with President Donald Trump. And what was his reaction?
“I’ve talked to President Trump about it, he knows it and understands it. We can’t get into all the antitrust, the agents, we can’t do that,” Tubervile told Hot Mic.
The NCAA will take care of the complicated areas, such as the broader legal structure of college sports and antitrust laws. As far as the bill is concerned, the Senator wants stricter rules. However, the one-time transfer window might come with some exceptions for serious situations like a death in the family, personal hardship, or major issues with coaches. Will Senator Tuberville’s bill advance this time?
