Dabo Swinney unleashed a lengthy and scathing rebuke of the current state of college football on Friday, including directly accussing Ole Miss and first-year head coach Pete Golding of tampering after Cal transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli flipped his commitment from Clemson to the Rebels on Thursday.
During what devolved into a nearly two-hour press conference Friday afternoon, Swinney proached a litany of topics, including introducing new-and-former Tigers offensive coordinator Chad Morris. But over the final 30 minutes of the press conference, Swinney attacked college football’s untenable calendar that resulted in one of the wildest in-season coaching carousels on record and led to an even crazier two-week transfer portal window in the midst of the College Football Playoff.
“There’s three main big, primary problems (in college football), and there’s one primary cause. … It’s because our current calendar is stupid,” Swinney said. “I don’t know how else to say it. It’s just stupid. … What planet am I living on? This is not what college football is all about.
“Players are leaving early because they’re trying to get ahead of this calendar, because the calendar is forcing them to do this. They’re being forced to make these early decisions,” Swinney continued. “Coaches like (new LSU head coach) Lane Kiffin are leaving teams amid Playoff runs. And listen, right or wrong, whether you agree with it or don’t agree with it personally, … professionally I understand. He’s trying to get ahead of the calendar so he can be successful at the next job. He didn’t create the calendar. … So let’s fix the problem.”
Kiffin infamously left Ole Miss to accept the head coaching opening at rival LSU on Sunday, Nov. 30, just two days removed from the Rebels regular-season finale in the Egg Bowl, a win that clinched the program’s first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. But after several days of back-and-forth, Kiffin opted to head to Baton Rouge knowing the Ole Miss administration wouldn’t allow a now-rival head coach to lead the Rebels through the Playoffs.
Ole Miss went on to make a spectacular run to the CFP national semifinals before falling to eventual national champion runner up Miami in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 8. All the while the NCAA’s two-week transfer portal window had already been open a week at that point, leaving those Playoff teams to scamble to fill their rosters while other progams were raiding the portal of top talent.
And while he didn’t have to deal with a coaching change or even widespread portal departures, the cut-throat nature of the transfer portal admittedly caught the 56-year-old Swinney off guard. In fact, the longtime Clemson head coach compared it to a drunken, shotgun-like wedding in Las Vegas.
“This is the first year that I’ve had to be deeply invested and involved in the portal. We’ve had some one offs here and there, but (those two weeks were) crazy, and it was eye-opening for me,” Swinney said. “… It was like meeting somebody at a bar and going across the street eight hours later and getting married in the Elvis wedding chapel. It was crazy. … A calendar change would create a cooling off period for everyone.”
That cooling-off period would involve moving the two-week transfer portal from Jan. 2-14 to either late February or early March, specifically Feb. 25-March 5 or March 1-10. In Swinney’s mind, that simple fix would allow head coaches and more importantly players to finish out a season without feeling pressure to make expedited and at times emotionally-charged decisions around their future while games are still being played. The two-month delay for transfers would also give some student-athletes an additional semester of school that could allow them necessary time toward completing their college degrees.
