For the second time in less than 24 hours, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney discussed his stance on the transfer portal during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
The Tigers' mentor responded to a comment from a caller during his Monday evening radio show, "Tiger Calls," about the portal.
"People always make a big deal out of this transfer portal stuff. I'm not anti-transfer portal," Swinney said. "We just haven't needed it. That could change. I've always said, if we need it, we'll use it strategically to fit a need or something."
A little over 12 hours later, he fielded a similar question from a reporter and gave a more elaborate response. Much of his reasoning for not using the portal is because of the kinds of recruits Clemson is able to get, he said. The program has had the No. 1 recruiting class in the ACC for the last five years with a top 10 class nationally since 2018.
"If I was at some school where you couldn't recruit, really, the best of the best high school kids, I probably would sign only transfers," Swinney said. "That's what a lot of people are going to do, which I think is sad because it's going to cost a lot of high school kids opportunities that they would've had at other places."
He also answered a question about the transfer portal last week during his radio show, where he called Clemson a "developmental program," though Swinney acknowledges that there will come a point where the Tigers may need to use it.
Some onlookers have wondered, however, when it comes to the team's offensive line, if it would help to add experience and depth after the line took a hit this season due to graduation and injuries.
When the question arose two weeks ago, though, Swinney said he didn't consider the portal at all.
"Those young guys are going to be great players — they're just young," he said of the current linemen. "I think there is a balance, at some point depending on what happens. You are always evaluating everything you do. It just depends on who is the best player and how the transfer portal impacts programs."
On Monday, the head coach continued that, in general, adding players from the transfer portal doesn't have anything to do with Clemson being 3-2, something that hasn't happened since 2014.
"We lost to Joe Burrow and he was a transfer quarterback, so should I have taken Joe Burrow over Trevor Lawrence and traded him out?" Swinney asked, referencing Clemson's 42-25 defeat to Burrow and Ohio State in the 2019 national championship. "It's not why we are 3-2."
The interest in Swinney's transfer portal stance seems to stem from comments he made in 2018 when he called then-transfer portal proposals "free agency and total chaos." A year later when asked about the portal, he said he wasn't against it and has used it once before. Kicker Steven Sawicki transferred to Clemson from North Carolina A&T in 2017 and appeared in 11 games, going 6 for 6 on PATs while also averaging 43.8 yards on six punts.
"If we need to use the portal, we'll use it, but I'm not going to do something just to do something, so I don't know why everybody keeps asking me that," Swinney said. "The transfer portal has always been around. It's just been grad guys, but there's not been anybody from a grad transfer standpoint that they would come in here and, I felt like or any of us felt like, could start here. We'd rather take the high school kid. That's been our philosophy here, and I think it's worked pretty good."
