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Kansas State football's Chris Klieman on recruiting cycles: 'We've got to make some changes'

Arne Green
Topeka Capital-Journal
Kansas State football coach Chris Klieman and his staff have had an unusually busy spring with recruiting for the Wildcats' 2022 roster.

SALINA — Kansas State coach Chris Klieman used to think that when spring practice wrapped up in April, he could close the book on recruiting for the upcoming football season.

How times have changed.

Thanks in large part to the transfer portal and the unprecedented player movement that resulted, what once was limited to two recruiting periods with national signing days in December and February, now has extended well into the month of May.

"Without question, we've added another cycle," Klieman said Tuesday during a K-State Catbackers stop in Salina. "We've had an awful lot of visitors in the last three weeks."

Fortunately for the Wildcats, it has been a fruitful month. Over the past two weekends, they not only entertained a slew of visitors — a mixture of both 2022 and '23 targets — but secured six commitments, split evenly between portal and junior college transfers.

Those additions helped fill the void created by numerous portal departures, including four since mid-April alone.

More:Kansas State's spring football recruiting bonanza continues with two more defensive backs

"We're always trying to add depth because we've lost so much depth," Klieman said. "Not only kids that have graduated and moved on, but the kids (that) have left the program.

"But everybody in the country is in the same position. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and there's people that are down 25, 30 scholarship guys. We're not down that far, but we're down a significant amount of numbers, where you worry about player safety and health."

If you think Klieman and the coaches have been burning the midnight oil, imagine you're Taylor Braet, who is in his 17th season as K-State's recruiting director.

Kansas State assistant Taylor Braet

"Yeah, I think it's like the third tier of the transfer portal," Braet said of the springtime scramble to fill rosters. "We kind of thought after the season there would be kids hopping in and then kind of after spring ball basically two periods of the transfer portal, and we kind of get back on juco kids now a little bit because of guys that are qualifying late or have gotten stuff figured out throughout the spring and now become eligible.

More:Breaking down Kansas State football's weekend flurry of four commitments

"You're just trying to make sure your roster is where it needs to be before the season, so some of it his portal driven. (But) I don't know that May has ever been what it is right now — a period completely different than it's ever been — and it's been exciting and fun and a lot of work, but that's also what next May is going to be like."

Or is it? If Klieman has his way, the NCAA will establish a calendar limiting the window in which players can enter the portal.

"We've got to make some changes," he said. "We're hopeful that it gets adjusted prior to the 2023 cycle. I wish we could say we've had a transfer portal calendar in there before the fall.

"I don't know what those dates are going to be. The bigger thing is when we're going to put those in place. Hopefully soon."

Braet said all he can do is roll with the changes.

"It's a new normal, and next year we'll see what else (happens) with being fluid and things changing," he said. "It's non-stop now."

More:Kansas State football loses linebackers Gaven Haselhorst, Kienen Gaskin to transfer portal

Klieman is concerned that the fluid nature of recruiting as it now stands will result in a lack of depth and consequently player health and safety issues.

"We want to make sure that the guys have a chance to compete and have rosters that you can get control of, and you're not trying to do those things at the end of the spring and early summer," he said. "You should have your football team set — and you always used to have your football team set — at the end of spring ball."

Without a portal calendar Klieman fears it will take a toll on the college coaching profession as a whole. And not just football.

"The whole calendar has to get adjusted here prior to 2023," he said. "I hope we do get some things in place, but it has to, or you're going to see more people like (Villanova basketball coach) Jay Wright. You're going to see more people just leaving the profession, and that's too bad."

Klieman wouldn't speculate on how exactly things will shake out, but reiterated that something has to change.

"We've got to still shrink it and curtail it a little bit so that coaches aren't recruiting all the time like we are to fill rosters," he said. "And athletes need to find places to go play.

"There's so many athletes that enter the portal and aren't finding a home yet, or entering the portal with a scholarship and leaving the portal without a scholarship."