The Clemson tigers have had their fair share of success and failure over the past five years, and despite the immense effort put into the coaching aspect of the organization the Tiger’s still haven’t one a national championship, at least not since the introduction of the transfer portal. Clemson Tiger’s head coach Dabo Swinney has been rather apprehensive to recruit players directly from the transfer portal as some other high level programs.

Tiger’s fans have emphasized Swinney’s reluctance towards the transfer portal, as a possible reason Clemson’s 5-5 record this season. However, even with this in mind Swinney doesn’t intend on altering his program’s approach towards the transfer portal.

”For the portal, nothing has changed for us, as far as what our approach is,” Swinney stated Tuesday. ”What puts us in the portal is not getting the best high school kid that we want, or a kid decommits late and you can’t replace it, like what happened last year. So, we went and got a little help because we had a gap.

”Or, you have a freshman kid that you have to overpay because I’m not gonna overpay for a freshman. I’ll pay more for a guy that I know what we got, as opposed to a freshman that you don’t. We’re gonna pay these guys as well, but there’s a threshold… You guys leave on your roster that you didn’t want to leave. That puts you in the portal. You have to fill that gap.”

Just this past offseason, the Clemson tigers have only added a total of three new players to their roster, according to the NCAA transfer portal, while subsequently losing around eight players to it. Overall, since the introduction of the transfer portal, the Clemson tigers have lost a total of 42 players to it and used it to add around five.

As Swinney noted, he’s resorting to heavily relying on recruiting players straight out of high school instead. However, Swinney’s recruiting method isn’t even remotely as effective when his recruiting classes aren’t as promising as they once were.

Back in 2020, Clemson acquired the No.3 recruiting class in the entire country, according to Rivals Industry rankings. The following year they were ranked at No.5 this past offseason No.23.

As time goes on Clemson is seemingly declining more and more ultimately failing to emulate previous success, and interestingly enough elite high school talent has become significantly less interested in signing with Clemson. Dabo Swinney and the Tigers know that they will have to access the portal to maintain consistency and fill some holes in the roster this upcoming offseason.

”While I don’t currently have a number. We know that we’ve got a couple of spots that we’ve got to fill, and we’ve known that,” Swinney stated. ”We’ve led the nation in retention the last three years, in the craziest time in the history of football. So, I would imagine we’ll still be right there, near the top in the country, in retention.”