Kenny Dillingham isn’t trying to dissuade Arizona State players from entering the portal ahead of the College Football Playoff. In fact, he revealed Monday when the portal opened that any who do are still welcome to compete with the Sun Devils this postseason.

Players will have until Dec. 28 to enter the portal before it closes, but teams who are still competing in the postseason will get an additional five days after their seasons end. Many ASU players told Dillingham they intended to take that route, but he responded by encouraging them to enter now to maximize their opportunities.

“Our guys have the opportunity to stay on our football team, and they’re like, ‘We’ll go in (the portal) at the end,’ and I go, ‘No, that’s not fair to you to go in after our run is over,” Dillingham said. “‘I want you to have the best opportunity to find a spot. You can go in day one right now, we’ll help you find a spot, and stay on our football team if you want to stay on our football team and let’s go on this ride together the rest of the way.’”

Arizona State has a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff after winning the Big 12 Championship and will not play its first game until Jan. 1. That being the case, Dillingham worried that many schools would fill up their transfer spots if his players waited until after the season is over.

By allowing his players to enter the portal now and still finish out the postseason run, both sides benefit.

“I didn’t want those guys to wait to go in because they felt like they had an opportunity to have a bigger role for a program until after the CFP,” Dillingham said. “I think that would have hurt their chances. So I made it very clear to the guys that, ‘You can stay on the team as long as you do what you’re supposed to do. Go to meetings, show up, be five minutes early, check in, weigh in, go to workouts.

“‘Even if you go in the portal here, that doesn’t affect me at all. That’s just us being on the same page and trying to help you achieve what you want to achieve in your career.’ So we will have some people going in that choose to stay a part of this team and it fires me up that we have the relationship between the kids on the team that they want that.”

Dillingham made heavy use of the transfer portal last season to bring in 29 players. However, the Sun Devils also saw just nearly as many (28) leave the program.

It’s unclear what those numbers will look like this year after the success the team has had in Dillingham’s second season.