For 2 years we’ve heard about the guardrails, the specific guidelines needed to rein in mistakes that have led to paradigm shifts in the NCAA’s beloved amateur model.

I don’t really need to tell you what happened the 1st chance the NCAA got to institute 1 of those very guardrails, do I?

You Know Who blew it again.

The NCAA Division I Council last week proposed changes to the transfer portal windows that would reduce the total number of days that players can enter the portal from 60 to 30. The current rules are 45 days for the winter portal, and 15 for the spring.

So why is the decrease to 30 total days not enough, you ask? Because no good deed goes unpunished.

Or in this case, no good deed comes without tampering.

The biggest problem in college football isn’t the explosion of NIL deals or player empowerment. It’s coaches and 3rd party negotiators tampering with other rosters.

When the NCAA announced 2 years ago that players would be given 1 free transfer without having to wait out a year of ineligibility, the move was done with zero forethought. The portal was wide open, all year.

A year later, after the NCAA saw the mess it created, the total portal days moved to 60. A year after that — once coaches figured out that tampering was the best way to complete your best roster — the NCAA went back to the drawing board.

Only this time, they didn’t slash enough days off the portal windows. Always reactive, never proactive.

Want to stop a wildfire? Burn the underbrush long before the canopy has a chance to rage out of control.

Want to end the idea of tampering, of Power 5 schools going after the rosters of each other and of Group of 5 schools?

Want to end the idea of multiple teams coming after North Carolina QB Drake Maye — as Tar Heels coach Mack Brown said happened — and many other high-profile players and players of need with substantial NIL deals?

Want to end the fanciful idea that coaches will turn in each other for tampering, and that’s how the NCAA can police the problem?

Cut the winter portal to 7 days from the Sunday after Championship Week, and the spring portal to 3 days after each school’s spring game. That’s 10 total days, and more than enough time for players to make a future decision.

If you truly want to end tampering — or at least get control of it — you have to stop it at its source. You’re not preventing players from free movement, you’re simply limiting the window.

The critical foundation of the portal doesn’t change: players simply need to be in the portal to transfer at any time. Players can get in the winter or spring portal, and not have to make a decision on where they’ll play until the first week of classes for the following season.

They still have power. They still control their ability to move freely and find a better fit.

Previously, the winter portal opened the day after bowl game selections, and lasted 45 days. The early signing period last year — which has now become a defacto National Signing Day with a large majority of high school players signing early — was Dec. 21. That meant there were roughly 30 days from signing day to the closing of the winter portal.

In other words, teams that missed out on high school recruits moved on to solidifying their rosters by recruiting players from existing rosters of other schools. Hence, the tampering problem.

That tampering, and the offer of large NIL deals to players from coaches or 3rd-party negotiators, are “out of control,” LSU coach Brian Kelly told me.

“The NFL doesn’t have a system like this,” he said. “If you told NFL players this is the system you’ll use, they’d jump at it and say where do I sign?”

But instead of putting firm guardrails on player movement — and thereby at least trying to control the influence of 3rd-party negotiators on an already shaky NIL system — the NCAA used another trim when it needed a buzzcut.

NIL is not the death of all things college sports, no matter what the NCAA tries to shovel and no matter how many times its representatives appear before Congress and beg for help. Players earning off their name, image and likeness is a good thing.

But NIL and 60 days (or the now proposed 30 days) of open portal business is a different, punishing animal altogether.

The NCAA has already blown the parameters of the transfer portal windows twice, each time without burning the underbrush.

And the canopy is burning again.