The transfer portal ain’t perfect.

It ain’t broke, either. That doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to fix it.

That seems like something at least worth visiting with what we’ve seen from the early stages of college football’s newest craze. As SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said at the SEC Meetings in Destin, Fla., there might actually be more players in the transfer portal than there are available FBS scholarships. There’s a thought.

As Will Muschamp said at the SEC Meetings, “a lot of people think grass is always greener on other side of fence, but that’s not always the case.” Muschamp would know a thing or two about that. He’s had several players enter the portal just in the last few months.

As of Wednesday morning, the SEC had 34 players entered in the transfer portal. That didn’t include guys like Justin Fields or Jalen Hurts, both of whom transferred months ago and are enrolled at their respective schools. There were 40 of those players already. Do some quick math and that’s a total of 74 players — and counting — or an average of 5.3 players per SEC program who have entered the portal since it came into existence on Oct. 15, 2018.

And if you haven’t seen the Bru McCoy situation, well, let’s just say this is the NCAA’s worst nightmare as it relates to the transfer portal.

Is the transfer portal turning this into free agency like Dabo Swinney fears? I’d argue that’s not the case, and that there are still a lot of benefits to it (players not being held back by coaches to go to a certain school, freedom when player is in bad situation outside of their control, a fair recruiting market for players to make decisions about their own value, etc.).

But I’ve got a suggestion or two for how to tweak the system so that coaches don’t totally hate it and players still benefit from it.

Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

For starters, I’d vote that a player can only go through the transfer portal once to avoid situations like McCoy’s. That’s a fairly obvious step that seems like everyone can get on board with.

As it stands, the portal is open year-round. Players can enter at any given moment and do so without seeking permission from a coach. The latter half of that sentence is fine.

What’s worrisome is that this is the first time the transfer portal will be active in August. You know, that month when teams are finalizing their depth charts for a 12-game season.

It’s inevitable that we’re going to have a slew of second-stringers at Power 5 programs leave their programs in the third week of August and try to go elsewhere to play immediately. And with how murky the NCAA rules have become in granting immediate eligibility — Tate Martell gets it but Luke Ford doesn’t? — who knows what can be promised to a player from an opposing coach right before the start of the season.

So why not make a timeframe for the portal. My original idea was to have it open from Jan. 1-May 1. That way, you could allow coaches the opportunity to recruit for the early signing period and then add players for the February signing period based on who enters the portal and who leaves early for the draft.

But since I’m in a good mood, I’ll open it up even more. Why don’t we make the portal open from Jan. 1-Aug. 1.

In that scenario, coaches won’t have to deal with players leaving in fall camp, nor will they have the midseason option of leaving because they’re upset with playing time. And with the new redshirt rule in place, perhaps that allows coaches and players to settle on a solution that keeps a year of their eligibility while it doesn’t decimate depth when it’s needed during those late-season conference games.

Players essentially still get the entire offseason to decide if they want to enter the portal, and coaches don’t have to wake up every morning checking the database and praying they don’t see one of their players in it.

One of the things I don’t think the NCAA anticipated was how public the transfer portal was going to be. I don’t think they realized that even if coaches and a select few have access to the database, the public was still going to find out about all of these players in the transfer portal.

And from the coaches’ standpoint, I get why they’re frustrated because it makes them look bad. With more players leaving than ever, they have to answer questions in the offseason about why their program had so many players in the transfer portal, even if it is just becoming the new norm.

Credit: Matt Bush-USA TODAY Sports

I realize the NCAA might not want to make a move like that when it finally made a pro-player move that seemed like a bit of a compromise in the “should players make money off their likeness” discussion.

This dynamic is like high schoolers who are frustrated with how strict their parents are. They finally get their parents to go from a 10 p.m. curfew to no weekend curfew at all. And the kids love it. It’s a sign that their parents are finally getting with the times, and they take full advantage of it.

Making a timeframe for the transfer portal would be like the parents saying “well, actually, we need you home by 11:15.”

So yeah, I get why the NCAA might not want to take the PR hit from instituting rules and regulations on the transfer portal less than a year into its existence.

But there’s an interesting idea for how coaches can stay within the parameters of the current transfer portal rules and swing the power back in their favor.

What if — and I’m just speculating here — a coach decides that they’re going to make an example of someone who decides to enter the portal. Maybe it’s a former 4-star recruit who isn’t happy to not be starting as a sophomore and he enters the portal to see what else is out there.

Let’s not forget that coaches have the right to not give a player their scholarship back once they enter the transfer portal. If word got around that former 4-star recruit “X” wanted to return to school “Y” but coach “Z” said “from now on, anyone entering the transfer portal isn’t coming back here,” that would set quite the precedent.

Could it backfire? Absolutely. Coaches obviously don’t want players leaving and 99 times out of 100, they probably want that talented player to come back to their team and not leave for somebody else’s. But there could also be long-term benefits to it, and it could force players to really think long and hard about their decisions instead of putting their name in and taking it out 2 days later.

At this current rate, coaches are going to continue to express their frustrations with this whole thing because it makes them powerless to a certain extent. That’s not a look the NCAA wants. Others would argue this has been a key, long overdue step in empowering college athletes.

Both of those things can be true at the same time. In fact, I think they are.

Let’s just figure out the best way to utilize this system before we get too set in a specific way of operating in which any change — even if it’s a necessary one — feels like a major shakeup.

Tweak away, NCAA.