The Transfer Portal: It's a 'nightmare' and necessity for Dabo Swinney, Mack Brown

Transfer season opens soon and Clemson coach Dabo Swinney knows he will have to navigate it one way or another.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Thu Dec 01 12:20:05 GMT-04:00 2022

The transfer portal is a quick fix in many ways, a chance for players looking for a fresh start to earn immediate playing time, and a chance for coaches to patch holes in their roster without having to go through the recruiting process. In a lot of ways, it works. But for coaches who have to recruit based on roster projections, it’s a nightmare.

The transfer portal will once again be in play starting next Monday – it re-opens on Dec. 5th and closes 45 days later on Jan. 18th. That is when fall-sport athletes, including football players, who intend to transfer can begin officially entering their names in the portal. It’s the first of two windows, and any football players who have not entered the portal will have to wait until the conclusion of the spring, beginning May 1, to submit their name if they choose at that point.

In the past, coaches could recruit based on the number of seniors leaving and project the number of juniors that might leave early. But now the coaches have to deal with the portal. Let’s say you have two wide receivers who are seniors and none who project to leave early. In the past, you recruit two more to fill those holes. Now, you have players who have the extra COVID year (which has to be factored into it), and you might have one spot open instead of two. Or, with the transfer portal, you might wake up one December morning with National Signing Day a week away and discover you have four spots open.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was asked earlier this week if the Tigers will dip into the portal to fill holes.

“Who knows? We’ll see what happens,” Swinney said. “We’re no different than anybody else. Everybody’s susceptible to transition. As I sit here right now, I don’t know.”

Clemson has brought in two players through the portal – quarterback Hunter Johnson and walk-on linebacker Jesiah Carlton. The Tigers looked at adding a center last spring after losing three centers, but the targets went elsewhere.

As of right now? Swinney likes what he has.

"We love our signing class, and we think we’ve addressed our needs based on what we know right now,” Swinney said. “But, again, who knows what’s coming down the pike? Nobody knows that. I’d say it’s a real-time world every single day with where we are right now in college football.”

North Carolina head coach Mack Brown was more animated concerning the portal, saying coaches have no clue how the roster will look.

"I was talking to (athletics director) Bubba (Cunningham) about it today that roster management's a nightmare right now. Coaches like to have control; you like to be organized, and you'd like to know what's going on. And right now, we've got no clue,” Brown said. “So, on Sunday, we will sit and talk to all of our players -- and they're in finals -- and then on Monday, we'll talk to our players and anybody on our team that wants to go to the transfer portal, it takes five minutes. So how many are gonna go? Will it be five? Will there be 10? Will there be 15? Will there be some starter that somebody has tampered with and called and already offered them money to leave? So that's what Sunday and Monday we'll be doing, just trying to figure out what our numbers look like come Monday night. And we have no clue. Who are seniors anymore? COVID guys have six years (of eligibility); some guys want to stay and can’t stay. It’s all messed up.”

"I've said if you're a backup and you want to go to the transfer portal, and you want to still play in the bowl game, you have helped us win this season, and you've put us in a position for the bowl game -- I don't mind if you stay (for the bowl game) as long as you stay and work hard and want to win. If you want to leave, we'll help you with what you do. But then we've got to start looking at the transfer portal. Most people get a head start, we don't; we go by the rules. So when someone gets in the portal, then you call them, and they've got an agent, so then you talk to their agent about coming and then you've got to get a transcript and find out if they can get in, and then you've got to work with NIL and the collectives as they start working with recruiting. And you try to figure out your team could look very, very different in January when they come back than it does for the bowl game this year.”

Brown said using the transfer portal just makes sense.

"You gotta keep recruiting, you gotta keep building, and it's no different than your businesses,” he said. “You try to build on it every day, and you try to make it stronger. And what we've got to is if we lose a second team player because he's not playing well, and we can get a transfer portal starter in to strengthen that position, then we're a better team next year.”