Dabo Swinney frustrated by roster management ramifications after COVID

Dabo Swinney is frustrated with the current roster management situation around college football. Due to COVID-19 severely impacting the 2020 season, student-athletes were awarded one extra season of eligibility. While a positive for most players, this has caused a ripple effect in the way that programs can recruit.

Swinney: Coaches struggling to manage their future rosters

Yahoo Sports reporter Pete Thamel posted a statement from the Clemson head coach on Tuesday morning. In this statement, Swinney voiced his frustrations, and mentioned a proposal that the ACC coaches brought forward.

Roster management is a mess because of the COVID year, and Dabo Swinney expressed his frustration at what a bad spot coaches are in. (Dave Clawson and Bronco Mendenhall have echoed similar thoughts.) pic.twitter.com/WvolOLcpfU

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 3, 2021

“It’s frustrating,” Swinney said. “It’s awesome that all these guys got an extra year. I think that’s awesome. This year, it’s not an issue. It’s a real problem for coaches moving forward from a roster management standpoint.

“It’s very complicated and frustrating. We put a proposal out there as ACC coaches. We even said, maybe give us five. Not that you get five more. If five guys on scholarship on your team came back, you’d at least have another leg room. It’s a great thing (for players), but it’s very frustrating from a roster management standpoint.”

Swinney went on to mention that Clemson isn’t necessarily having this issue at this point.

Issues involve future recruiting classes

While some programs might be fine right now, Swinney thinks that issues are going to arise in the recruiting classes of 2022 and 2023. This is the most frustrating part for Swinney.

“We (at Clemson) don’t really have an issue,” he said. “We’re fortunate. This year, we only have 11 seniors. We’re able to project and do what we need to do for the class of 2022. The problem for me is the class of 2023. For some schools, the class of 2022 is a real problem. They may have a lot of seniors and a lot of guys coming back. How do you go recruit? You don’t know how many scholarships you have. It’s hard to ask a kid right now. In two years, are you going to want that COVID year?”

Players are glad to have the opportunity to return for an extra season. The 2020 season was not a normal one with the COVID protocols in place. Players might see a direct benefit from having another season to play and potentially put their names onto NFL radars.

The issue is those additional years didn’t come with roster flexibility for programs, especially from a scholarship perspective. FBS programs are only allowed 85 scholarship players. Which means however many seniors elect to take advantage of the NCAA’s additional year of eligibility could limit the amount of incoming players the team can have on scholarship. This wrinkle makes it very difficult to project your roster through the coming years.

Image courtesy of: Streeter Lecka via Getty Images.