The transfer portal officially opens for business Dec. 9.

Hugh Freeze and his staff will be ready.

Auburn signed the nation's No. 8 recruiting class during the early signing period, giving the Tigers 25 incoming freshman to add to their roster. Seven players already expressed their intentions to depart from Auburn, so the shuffling of the roster has already begun.

Freeze discussed his approach to the portal Wednesday afternoon.

"We’ll reconvene Monday morning first thing, not that we’ll stop," Freeze said. "Our text strands, they have everything set up where everybody that needs to be notified about who has declared they’re going into the portal will know so we can evaluate them immediately and not wait until we get back in."

Even though he's giving the staff a break for the rest of the week and celebrate the incoming class, the portal will still demand attention. It's important to be ahead when it opens.

"We’ll try to have a couple days to recover from the season and from recruiting, but we can’t stop evaluating," Freeze said. "Everybody’s got their iPads and everybody’s gonna share their opinions so that we’ll be ready to roll next week."

Auburn tried to get the last visit for several transfers last season — something that didn't work out for the Tigers in some cases. There appears to be a different approach this cycle, which is to get transfer prospects on campus as soon as possible.

"You’ve got to immediately set up trips," Freeze said. "Truthfully I don’t want to be here on [Dec. 22] doing official visits, I really want to be at my mom’s. I haven’t been able to do Christmas at my mothers in a while because of ball and stuff. I hope to do that this year."

Freeze and the staff met Wednesday afternoon at the conclusion of early signing day, to discuss the number of guys at each position that they'll be targeting. He noted that "some of it's kinda a guessing game," with the portal, as it can be hard to predict which of his own players will hit the portal.

"We had most of our exit meetings and kinda know or have a reasonable guess as to where we are with the roster," Freeze said.

The winter window to enter the transfer portal is Dec. 9 through Dec. 28, although visits can only occur from Dec. 9 to Dec. 22. Another window will open for two and four-year transfers who intend to enroll mid-year from Jan. 1 through Jan. 5., in which visits can occur.