Swinney: Unintended consequences of college football’s shifting landscape ‘not healthy’

Dabo Swinney doesn’t have a problem with college football players transferring when it comes to their desire for a fresh start somewhere else. But the unintended consequences that have come with the transfer portal and other recent changes in college athletics don’t sit right with Clemson’s coach.

“The combination of the portal, NIL (name, image and likeness) and tampering, we’ve created this environment in college football that’s not healthy,” Swinney said during a recent interview with 247Sports analyst Carl Reed. “And any adult that’s really involved in it knows that. Very few people will say that because they’re worried about getting criticized or somebody’s going to write a bad article about them, but it’s just not healthy.”

Swinney isn’t against players being able to profit off their name, image and likeness either. But with the introduction of the one-time transfer policy, which allows players to transfer once during their careers and be immediately eligible at their next school, Swinney said programs trying to poach players from their current team is an issue that’s only becoming worse.

“The tampering that we have in college football, it’s sad,” Swinney said,

According to a report from Sports Illustrated earlier this month, more than 3,400 football players at all three levels had entered the portal in the three previous months alone. While high-profile movers such as quarterbacks Caleb Williams (Oklahoma to USC) and Spencer Rattler (Oklahoma to South Carolina) get much of the attention, not all transfers are finding new homes.

Swinney has an idea to reform the portal, which involves tying transfers to education. Swinney has no issue with players being immediately eligible as graduate transfers, which was the case even before the NCAA adopted the one-time transfer waiver. But if players transfer after just a year or two at their current school, Swinney proposed making those transfers sit out a year without losing any eligibility while doing so.

Previous NCAA transfer rules required undergraduate transfers to sit a season before being eligible at their new school, but their five-year eligibility window was affected because that meant using a redshirt to save a year of eligibility or losing a year if the player had previously burned his redshirt.

“His clock stops. He doesn’t lose eligibility,” Swinney said. “So now we’re incentivizing school. We’re incentivizing graduation. We’re incentivizing education. And upon that, we’re incentivizing finish. So upon graduation, you get that year back. You don’t lose anything.”

Not being immediately eligible may also make players think twice about leaving their current school, Swinney opined, which may keep them from being stranded in the portal.

“That’s how I see it,” he said. “I get criticized for that, but that’s what I believe. And there’s nobody that can say anything to make me not believe that it’s healthier for the game of college football and definitely incredibly healthier for young people to have to have some type of barrier, which would protect them from making irrational, emotional decisions based on the wrong things.”

As for his message to both prospective athletes and those already on his roster amid this new age of college football, Swinney said it’s to make sure they understand the values of Clemson’s program.

“The strength and conditioning, the coaching, the development, the nutrition, the holistic approach, the career development, the NIL, those are all important,” Swinney said. “But the main purpose of our program is graduation, developing as men, having a good experience and winning, all in that order. That’s never going to change for us.”