Scheduling football games, gambling and tampering in the transfer portal are among the hottest of topics discussed by coaches as the SEC spring meetings opened Tuesday in Destin.

Auburn’s Hugh Freeze offered a solution to the issues coaches have with their rosters being pillaged before players hit the portal.

And he knows it won’t fly beyond the beachside resort’s basement press room.

“I would love to see it go back to players not being able to transfer and be immediately eligible unless the coach leaves or is fired or they graduate,” Freeze said Tuesday morning. “I think that eliminates tampering. People aren’t going to come take players if they have to sit out.”

And then there’s the reality.

“I don’t think that will ever happen again,” Freeze acknowledged in the next breath. “So outside of that, I don’t know how you really stop some of the discussions.”

Freeze said tampering happens in a number of ways, “and it isn’t always the school that starts it” so it makes elimination of the process a tricky objective.

“There are so many (people) involved with these players now,” Freeze said. “I’m not talking about coaches at the college level but there are a lot of people involved who are trying to insert themselves or have been asked to insert themselves. There’s a lot of that going on.”

The concept of tampering hit the forefront with the advent of the transfer portal — the reality Freeze alluded too as an obvious barrier to his thought process — and the 2021 introduction on NIL compensation. There have been implications and indirect allegations of schools enticing stars into the portal and then to their campus. Others like Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi came right out with allegations like he did when his All-American receiver Jordan Addison transferred to USC last year.

“I’ve instructed our guys we don’t do that,” Freeze said. “You hear all the things ‘well this player may go in, alright we’ll go watch him.’ That’s what we’ll do but we better not be trying to reach out and influence people’s decisions on whether or not they’re going into the portal.”

Auburn’s added 14 players from the transfer portal since Freeze was hired in December, according to the 247Sports database.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.