As Indiana football readies for perhaps the biggest game in school history, the program must have at least partial attention on the day immediately after.

The No. 1 Hoosiers face No. 9 Alabama at 4 p.m. ET Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl as part of the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. Eight hours after kickoff in Pasadena, Calif., the NCAA’s lone transfer portal window opens. It spans from Jan. 2-16.

Indiana, with one of college football’s oldest rosters, will have to re-load in some capacity during the portal period. Yet if the Hoosiers win the Rose Bowl and play in the Peach Bowl on Jan. 9, they’ll spend at least half the transfer window preparing to play in the College Football Playoff semifinals while juggling portal recruiting. The process repeats if Indiana advances to the national championship.

To Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, the timing of events — be it the College Football Playoff games or the opening of the transfer window — needs attention. He feels his belief is in the majority among others within the coaching profession.

“I definitely think the calendar could be improved, and that would be unanimous amongst the coaches,” Cignetti told reporters Monday over Zoom. “And whether you got to move the start of the regular season up a week and then start playing in the playoffs when the season ends, so there’s a little bit better time to devote to high school recruiting and portal recruiting.

“We’re all looking, I think, for that solution.”

Cignetti issued a similar message earlier this season in an Oct. 20 press conference. He noted the spring transfer portal window has been valuable to Indiana, which landed cornerback D’Angelo Ponds and defensive tackles Tyrique Tucker and C.J. West after spring practice in 2024 and defensive ends Kellan Wyatt and Stephen Daley in 2025.

Now, there’s no spring transfer window, and the winter portal entrance date has been moved backward.

In 2024, players were free to enter the portal from Dec. 9-28. Cignetti noted it hurt a few schools who were still playing — eventual national champion Ohio State, which lost backup quarterback Devin Brown to the portal, among them — but now, there’s an odd window where players can announce their intentions to enter the portal and, unless their coach has been fired or left for another job, have to wait until Jan. 2.

“The rules, the way they are right now, I hope we take a good, hard look at what we’re doing,” Cignetti said in October. “I don’t quite understand, all these players are making decisions pretty much the end of November, what they’re doing. Then the whole month of December’s dead. Like, what are you supposed to do those 30 days, right?”

Cignetti implied the previous period, which allowed more contact, visits and recruiting in December, worked much better for a vast majority of schools — even if it was an inconvenience in some respects for College Football Playoff teams.

“I am not a big fan of what we’re doing,” Cignetti said. “To me, having the January 2nd portal date, like we start school January (12th). Doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t think the rules should be changed for two or three coaches that really had a problem with it because they were still playing.

“I mean, I think you got to look at the other schools, the other 75 or how many there are, P4 schools also.”

So, what’s the solution? Cignetti pitched the idea of, effectively, adding a college football commissioner.

“What you’re dealing with in college football is, just, you don’t have one guy in charge,” Cignetti said Dec. 22. “If you had one person calling the shots, I think it would be a lot cleaner. So, hopefully we’ll make some progress in that regard.”

During Indiana’s 12-day gap between earning the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff and learning the outcome between No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 9 Alabama, Cignetti spent time focusing on the Hoosiers’ future rosters.

Cignetti said he had 95% of the necessary retention conversations with players who have decisions to make about their future. Much of his attention, he said, was turned toward the 2027 roster.

But for Cignetti, who noted in July at Big Ten Media Day he’s also the Hoosiers’ general manager, the transfer portal is an unavoidable swimming pool of talent — one Indiana will be dipping its toes into once more this winter.

And much to Cignetti’s chagrin, the Hoosiers will be forced to do so immediately upon returning from Pasadena.

“That’s my thing right now,” Cignetti said in October. “You just don’t get off the portal in one year, two years. There’s going to be portal needs this year.”