'Thirteen Days Away From Complete Anarchy': Duke's Mike Elko Preparing For Transfer Portal To Open In College Football

While you prepare for the regular-season finale in college football, coaches across the country are also preparing for 'Complete Anarchy'. Duke head coach Mike Elko made it clear Monday that the upcoming transfer portal period is going to be chaos.

It's not hard to forget the chaos that erupted when Deion Sanders took the Colorado job, and immediately ransacked the portal for help. Almost 70 players later, the college football world was shocked.

This time, with the December period about to begin, NIL will once again be a driving force in roster management.

Along with the 30-day window to look around, the amount of money being offered to high-end talent has many coaches concerned. Lower-tier schools, or even middle of the pack power-5 schools, will have a hard time keeping star players from leaving, which is a concern for Elko.

Even though Duke is part of the ACC, they don't have the type of NIL funds to keep major contributors from looking around.

“We’re probably probably about thirteen days away from complete anarchy and the wild west, and that probably started three weeks ago," Mike Elko noted on Monday. “You hear all these guys talking about people reaching out to guys, recruiting guys, that's the world of college athletics now. It’s literally open free agency for all of college football. Our guys, no different than anyone else's are gonna be in that conversation."

"You've got to put together a really strong strategy to retain your players, and NIL is a big part of it," Elko continued.

Head coach Mike Elko of the Duke Blue Devils reacts during the second half of the game against the North Carolina Tar Heels. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)

Transfer Portal Will Effect Your Team, One Way Or Another

The portal period begins the day after championship Saturday, but for some schools it's already started. For schools like Texas A&M and Mississippi State, players have already started looking around, due to those programs firing the head coach. According to new rules, if a school fires its head coach, those players have a 30-day period to start looking around, immediately.

This doesn't apply to the period that starts in December, so some players could secure a home before the transfer portal action really begins. There will certainly be bidding wars for star athletes around the country. I'm sure you remember Jordan Addison leaving Pittsburgh for USC, or Sam Hartman heading to Notre Dame after playing for Wake Forest.

Mind you that money is not the overall factor for some of the players, but most athletes that can cash-in on their name will do it. Obviously the future is not guaranteed, which is another reason why players are looking to make all they can right now.

You might think a blue-blood school like North Carolina would have the funds to attract some of the top talent in college football. But this is simply not the case. Basketball is much easier to fund from an NIL standpoint than football.

"The ones that you all know about are all asking for money, usually, and that's a problem and we don't have much money," Tar Heels coach Mack Brown said, via WRAL's Brian Murphy. "That's why we got ours from Kent State and East Tennessee State and Coastal Carolina. That's what we've had to do because we can't afford some of the ones you see playing at other schools."

Prepare yourself now, there will be some crazy financial figures being discussed over the next six weeks as the portal officially opens.