Ouch
On Clemson’s gradual decline from as an elite program
The college football landscape has changed — specifically with the transfer portal and NIL — yet Swinney’s continued insistence on refusing to deviate from a very binary approach has kneecapped Clemson’s ceiling as a program.
They don’t offer 10th graders. They refuse to recruit grad transfers, and overall, appear allergic to the transfer portal in general. Swinney, who has made it clear that Clemson will never be a “pay for play” program, either, reiterating this week that “our NIL is for retention, not recruiting.”
Recruiting — to landing prep prospects or transfers — is never black and white, yet Swinney continues to operate like the original Andy Griffith Show is the only channel on TV.
“Honestly, it’s made my life easier,” he said this week.
“It’s made it a simpler process for us. We don’t waste any time in recruiting. It’s pretty clear-cut and up-front — who really aligns with who we are, and who’s looking for something different.”
Georgia, Alabama and Ohio State — the three programs that landed the Top-3 classes in the 2024 cycle — use the majority of their NIL collective funds for retention and not recruiting, too, but there’s a delicate balance there as well.
They also operate in the grey, and that’s why they are championship contenders on a yearly basis.
Clemson hasn’t signed a Top 10 recruiting class since 2021. They’ve signed one transfer player in four years — former Clemson quarterback Hunter Johnson, who returned to the program to basically be a player-coach. For all the talk about how Swinney feels like he has a responsibility to graduate Clemson’s signees, 31 players have transferred out of the program in the last four seasons — many of whom went on to be major contributors at other Power Conference schools.
When you refuse to backfill the roster with supplementary pieces from the portal (especially struggling units like OL, WR), then your depth (and talent advantage) vanishes and your team regresses.
On a related note: The Tigers haven’t made the College Football Playoff in the last three
When you don’t have magicians at quarterback like Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence, who are capable of Houdini acts, then suddenly operating with one arm tied behind your back doesn’t work out so well.
Clemson is still a great program in college football. But the Tigers are no longer elite, so for as loud as Swinney wants to holler about buying stock in the Tigers, the team’s gradual decline will only continue so long as he stubbornly sticks to an outdated approach.
https://www.on3.com/news/dabo-swinne...msons-ceiling/
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Originally Posted by chessieman
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