Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney has finally decided that the game's Transfer Portal may not be as bad as he once thought. Just a year or so ago, Swinney had sworn against accepting players from other schools but while teams made themselves better quickly by taking transfers, including plucking players from the Tigers' roster, he has decided that maybe, just maybe the portal isn't that bad at all. During the off season, Swinney has signed defensive end Will Heldt among others but more importantly he was able to hang onto quarterback Cade Klubnick, defensive linemen T.J.
Parker and Peter Woods and his entire receiving corp from last year's ACC Championship squad.
Overall, I believe Dabo was more against paying athletes through the NIL deal than he was against accepting transfers from other schools. He was, if you will, more " old school " than other coaches when it came to paying players to play. Being one of the very last coaches to buy into the NIL will no doubt make Clemson better because Swinney was already one of the best recruiters out there in terms of high school seniors.
Dabo Swinney is 180-47 at Clemson with a pair of national championships ( 2016, 2018). He's the best coach in school history and his twelve bowl victories with the Tigers are the most in ACC history. The former Alabama player and assistant coach took a couple of seasons to change his mind about accepting transfers and now that he's changed his mind, Clemson can only be a much better program....almost to the point it was when the Tigers were in the playoffs every year. In the latter part of the last decade, ( 2016-2020 ) Alabama and Clemson were the top two programs in college football. They played in four championship games in a five year stretch, ( 2015-2019 ) with both teams going 2-2 against each other. Since Clemson has dropped off a bit, the Tigers are still 50-16 since 2020.
Whether you like the Transfer Portal or not, it's here to stay and all coaches have to adapt or take the Nick Saban route and decide to retire rather than deal with it. Playing for Dabo is like playing for your favorite uncle. That's why he is considered to be one of the best recruiters ever. Now that he's come around to the portal and NIL you can look for Clemson to be a playoff contender each and every year.
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Randy Smith can be reached at
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