Dabo Swinney explains Clemson’s approach to transfer portal recruiting

Clemson has not been one of the college football powerhouses to pivot to using the transfer portal to build out much of their roster. Rather, Dabo Swinney still likes to recruit and develop his own.

Of course, since some Tiger players have ended up transferring out, Coach Swinney has had no choice but to tap into the portal if he wants to find experienced players to replace the guys leaving — rather than just bringing on more true freshmen. So he did say at signing day this week that Clemson went after some transfer targets, specifically along the offensive line.

“I think it was like four. I think it was four guys that we went after in the offensive line and, you know, actually a couple other guys that we made phone calls to, but you know, they just, you know it wasn’t an interest and a couple other guys that just weren’t right fit for us,” said Swinney, going on to note that academic hurdles are still a factor.

“So, you know, again, it’s not a lot of guys. I mean, you still have to be good enough, you still have to be the right fit. There’s, you know, you still have to be an academic fit. Nobody talks about that. You got to be able to be eligible, so it waters it down.”

While Clemson has had a hole or two open up throughout the depth chart, the Tigers have been fortunate to avoid a mass exodus like some programs have suffered.

“You know, it’s just where we are as a program. We haven’t gotten into the situation yet where we’ve had big massive gaps in our roster. So I’m glad we got Tyler Brown for a few more years instead of just one… you know. I’m glad we got Antonio Williams for a couple more years, I’m glad we got Cole Turner for maybe four more years, you know. You get this year back.”

For those who want to critique that style of roster building, well, Coach Swinney says he’s got quite the track record to reflect on having built a lot of elite college football teams on the back on organic high school recruiting.

“So I mean, that’s just — we’ve won. I mean, I know we only had eight wins this year, but there’s only two other teams that have had 13 8+ plus win seasons in a row. That’s Georgia and Alabama. So I think that’s just how we’ve done it. We’ve been consistent with graduation and we’ve been consistent with winning because of how we recruit.

“And again, we evaluate everything every year, so we get a situation where we think: if you bring somebody in, you got to let somebody go, you know, that’s the way it works and you know I love the guys here.”

Clemson continues to build internally over everything else.