Dabo Swinney With Scathing Remarks Regarding Transfer Portal, Tampering

Speaking at Clemson's Early Signing Day ceremony, head coach Dabo Swinney sounded off on the unintended consequences of the transfer portal and the likelihood of tampering that has come along with some of the recent rule changes.

Dabo Swinney is not a fan of some of the new transfer rules.

The advent of the portal, along with players now being allowed to transfer one time without penalty, has changed the entire landscape of college football, and the Clemson head coach is not overly impressed with the early results. 

"It's crazy, it's really sad, to be honest with you," Swinney said Wednesday at Clemson's signing day ceremony. "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. It's sad, but you know, it is what it is from that standpoint. You've got a lot of young people that; there's a time and a place, but most of the kids are in there when they shouldn't be in there."

Swinney has long maintained that players deciding to up and leave at the first sign of adversity isn't what's in their best interest long-term and that this new model will hurt graduation rates in the future.

"Some of the lessons we're teaching young people I don't think is going to benefit them well as they move through their life," Swinney said. "It is something everybody has to manage and deal with. There's no consequences. There's no rules. I'm all for transferring. I personally think we should let them go whenever they want. I just think they should sit a year and then you get that year back upon graduation. What we've done is decentivize and de-value education and I think that's the wrong approach." 

"We're going to have a lot of young people that aren't going to graduate. Mental health is one of the biggest issues in college. There's a lot of kids whose identity is wrapped up in football and all this does is further that. when they get to these other places and they think the grass is greener and they realize the mirror traveled with them, I think a lot of kids are going to suffer. I think graduation rates are going to go down and it'll be interesting to see where that is five years from now, 10 years from now."

Add the new NIL legislation into the equation, and players now have more power than ever before. While there are certainly some advantages to the new rules, having little to no oversight or regulation makes managing a roster extremely difficult as the sport evolves into this new era. 

"It's total chaos right now," Swinney said. "Tampering galore. Kids being manipulated. Grass is greener and all that stuff as opposed to putting the work in and graduating. There's no consequences. So now you've got agents and NIL, tampering, and you have no consequences. No consequences equals no conscience. There's no reason for pause, no barrier for young people, like, nothing. Education is like the last thing now."

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