Monday Thoughts: College football learning how to use the portal

Dabo Swinney has continued to recruit the high school ranks and has now dipped his toe into the portal pool while retaining the major pieces of his roster.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Monday, January 27 2025

Take a deep breath. Relax. College football is over, for now, and spring practice is a little over a month away. Until then we have plenty of basketball, baseball, and recruiting to keep us occupied.

College football crowned a new champion last week in Ohio State, and I am asked every day if I know the date of the spring game (I was told when things are confirmed, it will be announced). But the championship week gave me a chance to ask questions, talk to a lot of people, and gauge just where the sport stands as we head into the 2025 season.

Right now, all eyes are on the House settlement and what happens with that and the scholarship numbers later this spring. But there are a few takeaways from talking to different people in the sport about the landscape of the sport.

Let’s backtrack to a few years ago, when teams seemingly turned over entire rosters and used the transfer portal to instantly rebuild. Florida St. used it to effect, Deion Sanders and Colorado used it to turn that program around, and other schools have faced challenges as large swaths of their rosters decided to head elsewhere.

But that Florida St. formula proved to be flawed. The portal giveth and the portal taketh away. Arizona lost 31 players to the portal in the most recent movement, while Purdue and Arkansas lost 30 apiece. Oklahoma lost 27 to the portal, while Miss. St. and UCF each lost 26. Nebraska lost 25, Wisconsin and Washington lost 24, and Florida St., Kentucky, and Utah each lost 23.

Losing a quarter of your roster – after the early National Signing Day no less – is never a good thing.

Florida St.’s portal experiment led to an undefeated regular season in 2023, defections before the bowl game, and two wins in 2024. Mike Norvell and company have realized once again that high school recruiting is important but still face challenges after lost 23 more players.

One of the main takeaways was that this year’s portal crop simply didn’t measure up – talent-wise – to previous crops. The better players are realizing that sometimes it’s better to stay in one place, and schools are realizing that it’s better to recruit, develop, and retain those players while augmenting with a few pieces from the portal.

That’s one of the reasons that Clemson is considered an early front-runner for the ACC title and a chance at a College Football Playoff in 2025. Head coach Dabo Swinney has continued to recruit the high school ranks and has now dipped his toe into the portal pool while retaining the major pieces of his roster. Win, win, and win.

*Turning the page to basketball – head coach Brad Brownell’s squad has started the season 9-1 in ACC play, only the second time in program history that’s been done. The Tigers started 10-1 in league play during the 2022-2023 season. That team lost five out of its last nine in the regular season, blew out NC State to open the ACC Tournament but lost to Virginia in a rout and wound up in the NIT, losing at home to Morehead State in the opening round.

This team is deeper than that team, with plenty of scoring options, and now has almost a week to get Ian Schieffelin’s back healthier and let players recover from the flu bug that hit the team last week.

Clemson’s next two games (NC State 2-6 in ACC play, Georgia Tech 3-6) are very winnable, and Duke comes calling February 8th.