Dabo Swinney only recently started to embrace the transfer portal at Clemson. However, he is putting the Tigers at a major disadvantage by doing things the “right” way.
Or he is lying…
If Tigers fans want to be best positioned to win college football games, they should hope it is the latter. It would much be better for the program for Swinney to fib than to hurt his chances of landing top talent.
Dabo Swinney is new to the transfer portal.
Clemson chose not to go hard after players in the transfer portal for the first four years of its existence. Swinney took only two reserve quarterbacks in 2022 and 2023 and whiffed on the few players that he presented with an offer in the spring of 2024.
Only last December did the Tigers land their first non-quarterback commitment through the portal— more than five years after it first came to exist.
Some college football coaches, like Lane Kiffin, choose to build the bulk of their roster through the transfer portal. Others choose to supplement their current roster with a few transfer additions. Some go the traditional high school recruiting route until they can’t anymore. Swinney is somewhere in between.
He puts a heavy emphasis on high schoolers and their development and no one player is going to get processed out, which is admirable. He recently started to add players at positions of need from the portal but only a few.
Clemson is at a disadvantage.
Technically speaking, it is illegal for a college football program to recruit a player who has not formally entered the transfer portal. The portal will be open from Jan. 2-16.
Players can declare their intentions to enter the transfer portal and be listed in the system before Jan. 2. By the rules as they are written, other coaches and programs cannot recruit them until after that date.
They do so anyway.
Players often commit to their next program just days after they enter the transfer portal prior to the portal being open. It is what it is. It happens all over the country. The NCAA won’t can’t do anything about it.
However, Clemson will not participate in this kind of illicit behavior. Dabo Swinney won’t “cut deals” with a transfer until the portal officially opens in January.
Dabo Swinney reiterated something today he’s said previously: He won’t “cut deals” with transfers before they are officially in the portal in January.
— Jon Blau (@Jon_Blau) December 16, 2025
“We’re going to do it right … I don’t care what other people do.” pic.twitter.com/XZ87Y6HwQL
Credit to Swinney. This is an admirable approach. Players should want to play for him because of how he carries himself and his program. It is refreshing!
But it also puts the Tigers at a major disadvantage. They are going to miss out on a lot of the top athletes in the transfer portal because they won’t “cut a deal” with an athlete before he is in the portal.
Dabo Swinney said so himself.
“Some of the best players out there go in the portal, and 10 minutes later [they’re] committed somewhere,” he said.
That means Clemson is not going to get the best players. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.