Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney didn’t hide his feelings or mince words about the NCAA transfer portal when discussing it at length Wednesday during Clemson Football’s National Signing Day Show.
Swinney says tampering is occurring with student-athletes, and he wants to see a level of order be restored to what he called the “chaos” of the portal.
“It’s crazy. It’s really sad, to be honest with you,” Swinney said. “I think there’s right around 2,000 kids in the portal, and most of them don’t have anywhere to go. There’s so much tampering going on and so many adults manipulating young people, and it’s sad. But it is what it is, from that standpoint. There’s a time and a place, but most of the kids are in there when they shouldn’t be in there. Some are and some shouldn’t. So, some of the lessons that we’re teaching young people I don’t think is going to benefit them well as they move through their life.
“But it is something that everybody has to manage, has to deal with. There’s no consequences, there’s no rules. I mean, I’m all for transferring. I personally think we should let them go anytime they want, wherever. I just think you should have to sit a year and then you get that year back upon graduation. I think what we’ve done is we have desensitized and devalued education, and I think that’s the wrong approach, because we’re going to have a lot of young people that aren’t going to graduate.”
Swinney is worried that college football is trending toward a period of lowered graduation rates due to movement of players from one school to another stemming from the transfer portal.
“Mental health is one of the biggest issues in college, and I think there’s a lot of kids whose identity is wrapped up in football, and all this does is further that,” Swinney said. “And then when they get to these other places and they all think the grass is greener and they realize that the mirror traveled with them – and it is the man in the mirror – man, I think a lot of kids are going to suffer. I think graduation rates are going to go down. Graduation rates, right now, all-time high in college football, and it’ll be interesting to see where that is five years from now, 10 years from now.”
Swinney also talked about how he believes student-athletes are getting bad information from agents amid the new name, image and likeness landscape of college football.
“It’s total chaos right now,” he said. “Again, tampering galore, kids being manipulated, the grass is greener, all that stuff, as opposed to putting the work in. … Because there’s no consequences. So now you’ve got agents and NIL and tampering, and you have no consequences, and no consequences equals no conscience. There’s no reason for pause, there’s no barrier at all for young people – like, nothing. So, that’s not a good situation because there’s no order whatsoever, and to me, it flips everything up. Education is like the last thing now.”
Swinney feels student-athletes should be required to sit out for one year if they decide to transfer, as opposed to the current one-time transfer rule that allows all student-athletes to transfer once without being required to sit out for a year.
“I think if you just let them all go any time they want, no barriers, but you sit a year, that would create some pause and a little bit of a consequence, and it would eliminate a lot of this tampering that’s going on, which is sad,” Swinney said. “Let them get acclimated, let them get adjusted, whatever, and then upon graduation, you get that year back. So, you don’t really lose anything. And if you are that elite, unique, great junior, then you don’t need that year anyway. It doesn’t matter. But that keeps the main thing the main thing to me, and to me, that makes too much common sense.”
Swinney hopes to see the transfer portal be better controlled and policed in the coming years.
“Right now, it’s a lot of chaos and as someone who’s been a part of college football for a long time, it’s sad,” Swinney said. “But it is what it is, and we’ll certainly manage everything as good as anybody out there, and we’ll be effective, but not like some of these places are. And you’re going to see a lot of these colleges quit signing high school kids. They’re going to quit signing them. They’re just going to sign transfers because the transfers are more invested than a high school kid.
“So, I just think the intention was good, but the unintended consequences are really bad. Probably be over the next couple years, eventually I think there will be hopefully some order to the chaos.”
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