Why Clemson football is choosing to embrace the transfer market in the future
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has had strong feelings in the past about free-agency in College Football and what the Transfer Portal means to the sport, yet late last week, reports surfaced that showed a potential change in how he’ll operate moving forward.
It was reported last week that Swinney is planning a few shakeups in his Clemson football coaching staff.
He is moving C.J. Spiller to running backs coach after a year serving as an unpaid graduate assistant. Tony Elliott– who is the OC and was the RBs coach- will now coach tight ends. Danny Pearman, who was the special teams coordinator and TE coach, will now fill a new role off-the-field that will consist of two major facets: Evaluating the team in-house and evaluating the NCAA Transfer Portal.
Swinney has been open and honest about how he feels to this point and it’s clearly not something that he wanted to turn to early on. That being said, he knew he had to evolve and that’s exactly why the change was made.
Clemson football will look at transfers, but that doesn’t mean culture or character will be sacrificed
Swinney isn’t about to start recruiting out of the transfer portal as a normal occurrence. We’re not about to see the Clemson football program bring in multiple transfers each offseason. That’s just not going to happen.
What Swinney is doing is being open to change.
He’s now open to bringing in the right talent at the right time that will help the team as a whole improve.
It’s going to be more than just evaluating talent, as well. Clemson will evaluate the player as a whole- character, culture fit & talent- to determine whether or not they’ll bring them in, just as they would a high school recruit.
The end result will mean that the Tigers might not miss out on a Trey Sermon or Joe Burrow (if the need is there) in the future.
Swinney has shown that he is willing to evolve and wants to stay ahead of the curve.
This is a big step for Clemson football fans as the program continues to grow and that’s exactly why Swinney is embracing the transfer market.