The Transfer Portal Hasn't Even Opened Yet And It's Already A Circus

The transfer portal giveth, and the transfer portal taketh away.

This isn't a new phenomenon, but this year feels especially chaotic in a world where bidding wars occur before players are able to officially enter the portal.

That's right, the transfer portal for college football doesn't even open officially until Friday, but players are already lining up to submit their paperwork to get the hell out of wherever they're enrolled right now.

This has affected some schools more than others.

READ: Guess Who's Back In The Transfer Portal For Year 7?

Take Group of Five programs, for example. It's unfortunate, but even the best G5 teams like James Madison, North Texas, and Tulane have turned into feeder schools for the power programs to poach from, both in the player and head coach department.

It's a sad side effect of a sport being dominated by money and unregulated player movement, but it's not just the G5 that's getting raided.

Plenty of Power 4 mainstays are seeing a mass exodus of their best athletes, causing many to wonder how sustainable this era of college football is in its present form.

LSU's entire offensive line depth chart seems to have vanished overnight, with most of their two-deep announcing their intentions to hit the portal come January 2.

Tiger fans may try and hand-wave this as their offensive line being downright offensive this year, and they may be right, but O-linemen are a premium position in college football, and having to buy an entire starting five in the portal won't be an easy task, no matter how flush with cash you are.

Teams like LSU, along with others like Florida and Penn State, have a built-in excuse of welcoming a brand-new coaching staff as a reason for their mass exoduses, but what about a team like Florida State?

The Seminoles retained Mike Norvell earlier this season, and that kind of stability normally means your roster is more likely to stay intact, but that hasn't exactly been the case in Tallahassee.

FSU has lived by the portal in the past, but now it seems as if they are dying by it, too, and they don't have the high school recruiting to offset that (I tried to warn you guys).

Even teams that are thought to be gold mines when it comes to NIL money are seeing some of their best talent walk out the door.

It's no secret that Auburn is a big spender when it comes to talent acquisition, but that hasn't stopped a guy like Cam Coleman, perhaps the biggest name on their team, from wanting out.

The most hilarious part of these announcements is when a player gets cold feet (or perhaps good intel) and decides not to leave.

With the portal not officially open yet, it makes for some good comedy when a player opts to withdraw their name from something that never needed to be announced in the first place, which is what happened to Florida tight end Amir Jackson.

Make no mistake, when this bad boy opens up OFFICIALLY on Friday, things will get even more wild.

This might be the craziest transfer portal period yet, owing in part to the fact that the NCAA finally grew some balls and implemented a one-time transfer window.

It's not much, but it's a start, and we can only hope as fans of this once-beautiful sport that there is more where that came from.