Dabo Swinney shares reaction to transfer portal changes

Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney shared his reaction to the recent changes in the transfer portal rules and process.

The NCAA has shrunk the window to enter the transfer portal. Now, there will only be 45 total days when a player can enter the transfer portal. That’s 30 days following the season and 15 in the Spring. Overall, this is a change that Swinney thinks is a good thing.

“I think when you look at the portal, I think a lot of the data’s driving that and that most of the kids are in the portal in the first four, five, six days,” Dabo Swinney said. “So, I think that’s probably what’s driving it, but you also want to make sure that they’ve got plenty of opportunity to get in there. So, I think they found a happy medium.”

Since the initial change to transfer rules, allowing players to transfer once as an undergraduate without sitting out, Dabo Swinney has received a lot of criticism for his approach to the transfer portal. In particular, he’s been criticized for not using it enough.

“The portal stubbornness is the key thing right here,” On3’s Andy Staples said following Clemson’s opening loss to Duke. “This is what we keep coming back to is Dabo not adjusting to today’s college football.”

Clemson was 65th in the 2023 On3 Transfer Portal Rankings. The Tigers took one player, a backup quarterback while losing 12 players to the portal in their transfer class.

Dabo Swinney on his approach to the transfer portal

Over the summer, Dabo Swinney shared his approach to the transfer portal. He explained that he feels the program is well-established under him and because of that he doesn’t feel a need to heavily use the portal.

“Everybody’s different. If I took a job today, and you’re living in the portal because you got a lot of guys going. But I mean I’m going on Year 15 and our program is very established and there’s a lot of continuity. We have not lost any starters. You know, what puts us in the portal is starters leaving your program. We don’t have single starter leave. And then the other thing is, if you have a bunch of guys leave after spring practice, you can’t get high school kids. We’ve had two guys leave in the past two years and they were both graduates,” Swinney said.

“We’ve recruited well … So we’ve been a developmental program for a long time, we signed a couple of quarterbacks out of the portal that have filled a need for us. And we’ve actually tried on a couple other guys along the way … But if you look at our roster and we just had a lot of retention. Like this year we had seven guys back that are all graduates, have master’s degrees and I didn’t anticipate any of them being back.”