NIL

Inside the transfer portal

Published

8 months ago

April 25, 2025

Dan MurphyApr 25, 2025, 06:55 AM ET
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- Covers the Big Ten
- Joined ESPN.com in 2014
- Graduate of the University of Notre Dame

EMOTIONS TUG AT Clayton Powell-Lee as he pulls open the doors to the Georgia Tech football team facility a few minutes before noon on Monday. The 21-year-old strong safety has spent some sleep-deprived nights for the past month searching for an answer to perhaps the most consequential choice of his life: Stay put on his current team or transfer in search of a bigger payday.

Decision time has arrived.

If he stays at Georgia Tech for his final season of eligibility, he can build on his 53 tackles as a starter last season, after which he landed a six-figure name, image and likeness contract with the school. But Powell-Lee says he’s worth more. His agents — Jacob Piasecki and Jason Bloom of A&P Sports Agency — and his mother agree.

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Earlier that morning, Georgia Tech had declined to negotiate an increase, Powell-Lee’s agents said. But the market for defensive backs is booming, they told him, and chances are good he could double his current payday. Provided, that is, he was willing to set aside his notions of team loyalty, leave his hometown Atlanta and abandon the school where his father, Gary Lee, had caught touchdown passes for the Yellow Jackets in the 1980s.

Sitting outside the team facility moments before entering, Powell-Lee dials into a conference call with Piasecki, Bloom, and his mother, Rometta Powell. All had agreed to let ESPN listen in.

“They need to be shook awake,” Rometta Powell says to the group. “They’re trying to play games. They’ve got the money.”

The pressure is building on Powell-Lee. The next step, they tell him, is to go upstairs and get the paperwork from a compliance officer to enter the transfer portal. Powell-Lee agrees with the others on the call, hangs up and pulls open the doors. But instead of the compliance office, he soon finds himself standing in the doorway of head coach Brent Key.

“I told him I had an offer on the table,” Powell-Lee said. “I have an offer on the table, and it’s sitting there in front of me.”

THE TRANSFER PORTAL — a phrase heard often in the NIL era but perhaps little understood by the general public — is extinguishing any remaining pretenses of amateurism in college football. Twice a year, players are set loose in an untamed, largely opaque marketplace to seek new teams and increasingly large sums of money. There are few, if any, universal truths or safe blanket statements that fully describe how this emerging world operates, but during the 10-day opening of the portal starting April 16, ESPN received an inside look at how some agents and general managers work with athletes and their families to sort through their options.

The player. The agents. The recruiter. All come together at the portal. This is a glimpse of the frenzied new reality of how college football rosters are formed.

The construction of a college football roster has changed dramatically in the past several years thanks to the introduction of NIL deals that serve as de facto salaries and a federal court order that allows players to transfer with almost no restrictions. The portal serves as a formal declaration that athletes are interested in hearing from new suitors.

The transfer market moves with the force of a riptide. Coaches act fast to fill the gaps in their rosters. The waves of players who enter risk losing their spot if they hesitate to pick a new school. To speed things along, the nitty-gritty aspects of deal-making in the portal are often sorted between two relatively new creatures to the college football universe: a team’s general manager and a player’s agent.

Gone are the days of predictable rosters and lengthy recruiting courtships where coaches sat in prospects’ living rooms to make their pitch. While many players will still visit campus and meet the coaching staff before officially signing with a team, most of their decisions are made in a matter of days through an onslaught of text messages, phone tag and two-minute calls that reach fever pitch on the day the portal opens.

JACOB PIASECKI HAS his phone pressed to his ear when he arrives at A&P Agency’s offices in Austin, Texas, shortly after 9 a.m. on April 16. Six of his agency’s roughly 120 clients have already declared their interest in transferring as of the portal’s opening day, and by the sound of the current call, another player is eager to join them.

The SEC player on the other end of the line just finished his post-spring-practice meeting with his coaches. The player has learned he’s not a guaranteed starter and therefore isn’t likely to receive a pay bump from his current $50,000 NIL contract.

Piasecki waves Bloom, A&P’s general manager, into his glass-walled office from across the hall. They both believe the player can command first-stringer money if he decides to transfer, which would mean making between five and 10 times what he currently makes.

The player’s parents have already called the coach to ask for more information. Are the coaches playing games to keep his value down? Parental intervention is exactly what Bloom and Piasecki don’t want. The agents’ goal, they say, is to serve as the sole point of contact with teams and move forward strategically. They coordinate with the player and his parents, setting up a plan to ask his current team for a raise before exploring options. By the end of the day, that player will be in the portal, but for now the morning’s first brushfire has been extinguished.

The corridor leading to Piasecki’s office is lined with boxes of promotional merchandise soon to be mailed to clients. The decor consists of posters and footballs signed by players A&P has represented. On one bookshelf along with memorabilia are two thick textbooks: “Astrophysics” and “Quantum Mechanics.” They are the last vestiges of the physics degree he was wrapping up at Texas A&M when he decided to launch his agency alongside co-founder Stefan Aguilera.

That was 2021, the first year college players could make money from NIL deals.

They have since built a six-person team and partnered with a fellow Texas A&M alum, attorney Tony Buzbee, whose law firm reviews the contracts A&P players sign. The agency says last year it generated roughly $1.25 million in revenue, a number they say should grow this spring as they represent a number of highly ranked players in the transfer portal. Physics class is mostly a distant memory.

“Physics teaches you to take really complicated problems and break them down into smaller pieces to solve one at a time,” Piasecki said. “And that’s pretty much what we’re doing here. It’s just piecing together a ton of small problems.”

POWELL-LEE MET with Piasecki and Bloom in early March to discuss what he wanted to get out of his last season of college football. That’s when the emotional tug became apparent. On the one hand, Powell-Lee said he wanted to finish his career and get his degree at Georgia Tech. On the other, he wanted a showcase to maximize his NFL draft potential.

He told the agents he would consider other schools if he couldn’t get a better deal from Georgia Tech.

“Obviously when you’ve been in a place for so long and coaches know you, you don’t necessarily want to leave,” Powell-Lee told ESPN. “But at this point, college football is a business. Decisions have to be made with money and playing time in mind. … Jacob and Jason have a lot of connections, so it’s about just letting them be my ears in the market.”

A&P’s team spends most of the spring working phones or traveling to meet with general managers from as many teams as possible, the agents said.

In mid-March, Piasecki and Bloom visited the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers’ recruiting director, Justin Speros, told them his coaches’ wish list included one or more defensive backs. The agents mentioned Powell-Lee among others who might be interested in transferring.

Coaches and staff members are prohibited from contacting any player who has not yet formally entered the transfer portal, but there are no rules against contact with agents to register a team’s needs. Schools, generally, won’t make any specific promises before a player is in the portal, but the current system provides ample gray area to make it clear to agents and their athletes what kind of money they could stand to make in the portal. So Powell-Lee’s “offer on the table” would have been more conceptual than literal during his meeting with his coach.

Speros says he did not make any specific offer to Powell-Lee or other players who were not in the portal. The interactions ESPN witnessed appeared to stay within NCAA rules.

“I might say ‘Hey, I need corners, so if you’ve got a guy, call me up once the portal opens,'” Speros told ESPN. “This past winter was really the first year that if you weren’t talking to the agent, you weren’t really recruiting a kid. You’re eight steps behind if you don’t know about a kid before he hits the portal.”

Bloom calls Speros at 12:36 p.m. on April 16, hours after the portal has officially opened. As the phone rings, he and Piasecki scan through lists and spreadsheets. One includes estimates of each client’s potential market value, calculated using their recruiting rankings, college experience, Pro Football Focus rating and current demand at their position, among other factors. Another lists teams and their current needs, based on information the agency gained from contacts earlier this spring.

Every past offer any team has made to one of its players is also recorded, along with contract comparisons organized by position and conference to get a sense of the market. Unlike in the NFL, player contracts are not public in college football. Good data is hard to find.

Using an agent — especially those who represent scores of clients — can help athletes get access to a better picture of the market. But that comes at a cost. A&P takes an 8% cut on most of the deals for Power 4 conference players it represents. That number can go as high as 15%, especially for young players or FCS-level players who won’t generate as much attention in the portal on their own.

It’s not clear how many of the thousands of athletes who entered the transfer portal this year are represented by agents, but several industry experts estimate that more than half have no representation.

Throughout the first day, Bloom and A&P’s director of scouting, Will Scott, constantly monitor online lists of players who have just entered the portal. A new listing is a new potential client. Scott has data on around 200 players he has evaluated ahead of time and A&P would like to represent if they want to transfer.

They reach out to players via direct message on Instagram to gauge their interest. Bloom calls to pitch prospects, usually citing the agency’s relationships with general managers throughout the country and unique brand endorsements its agents have arranged for athletes in the past, such as an arranged visit with celebrity jeweler Johnny Dang.

Most of the agents’ day, though, is consumed in a barrage of brief, unemotional phone calls. Some players receive raises from their current teams. Others jump in the portal and start to generate offers.

By 9 p.m., the A&P team is slouched in chairs around a conference room table covered with takeout trays of barbecue. People scroll through social media and text messages while making a plan for the next day, cracking jokes that are a better fit for locker rooms than boardrooms.

Most of the A&P team is not yet 30 years old. None of them had experience in the sports agent industry before joining A&P. But on just the first day of portal season, the group generated nearly $1 million in new money for clients. That’s the goal, Bloom says: a million dollars a day while the portal remains open.

“It is a little wild,” Piasecki says to the room, “that we’re just six guys in an office in Texas but we’re shaping a market for these institutions that bring in millions and millions.”

IT’S LATE THURSDAY morning and Day 2 of the 10-day sprint. At UVA, recruiting director Speros says he’s happy with his progress hunting for tackles and defensive ends, but defensive backs are proving to be an elusive, rare commodity in this spring’s portal.

Bloom and Piasecki are on the phone pitching Speros with prospects from their growing list of portal-declared clients. The agents offer defensive ends, a tight end and a running back.

Speros cuts them off. “I’m wasting my breath right now if I’m not talking about DBs, guys,” he says.

He tells ESPN that, for any position where he needs one or two players to fill out a depth chart, he knows he’ll need roughly 10 “hooks in the water” to make it work. Sometimes the players scouted will choose another team. Others come with too high of an asking price.

“We prefer not to be transactional, but it just is what it is,” Speros says. “There are things we need to do to keep pressing forward. And what that means is a lot of either just getting to a number or not getting to the number and moving on.”

Speros and Tyler Jones, a deputy athletic director, oversee the budget for building out their roster. For this spring, their total spending power is a somewhat flexible number that combines the money the school is expecting to be able to share with players directly starting this summer along with contributions from the school’s booster collective.

Speros and his staff have done months of scouting hundreds of players across college football to get a sense of what they’re willing to pay. As new players who might fit Virginia’s needs enter the portal, a group of interns creates short film cutups of their highlights so the coaching staff can evaluate the players based on about a dozen plays. Virginia also uses multiple data analytics programs to rate players and get a sense of their market value.

With one of the team’s starting cornerbacks out for the season with an ACL tear and a lot of interest in defensive backfield players, Speros acknowledges he’ll have to act fast and potentially pay high rates to fill that gap on the depth chart.

Bloom tells him that Powell-Lee is scheduled to meet with his coaches at Georgia Tech the following day and will make a decision about the portal soon after. Speros expresses interest. Enough interest, in fact, that he’s willing to sit tight on a few other options at safety until he hears about Powell-Lee’s decision.

A long weekend passes, and Powell-Lee is still unsure of how he wants to proceed. During spring practice, he told reporters he had developed a new sense of chemistry with his fellow defensive backs at Georgia Tech and felt a duty to help the younger players get settled into their new positions.

He hasn’t heard the answers he wants from coaches when he has asked about a raise, but now, with less than a week before the portal window closes, ambivalence sets in as he approaches the team facility to start the portal registration paperwork.

His agents say it would be crazy for Powell-Lee to pass up the money he could get in the portal. His mother, Powell-Lee says, has been supportive throughout the process but also tells him not to shy away from getting what he’s worth.

Still, he says, something doesn’t feel right.

“I was just sitting there, I was just thinking to myself, like, something in my heart and my gut is just telling me not to go grab those papers right now but instead go up there yourself and tell them that you want to talk to them,” Powell-Lee said a few days later.

He said his discussion with Coach Key went well. And later that night, he discovered some new information while researching his options online that made his decision much easier: Virginia, like many universities, will accept only up to 60 credit hours of previous coursework for any transfer student. For Powell-Lee, that would mean essentially erasing a year’s worth of credits he has earned at Georgia Tech, making it impossible to graduate in the same academic year that he wraps up his college football career.

“I had to really just sit there and ask myself, is that really worth losing all those credits to make however much money?” Powell-Lee said. “Personally, I was like, no, it’s not fully worth it, honestly.”

Powell-Lee declined to say how much money he was potentially leaving on the table other than to say it was “a lot.”

By Wednesday, Powell-Lee had officially decided he wasn’t going to enter the portal. Virginia and Speros had already moved on to search for new options on defense. Piasecki and Bloom said Georgia Tech agreed to provide Powell-Lee with a relatively small increase in pay after learning about some of his other options — but nothing that compared to what other schools thought they might be willing to pay him.

“It just is what it is,” Bloom said. “That’s the business we’re in.”

Even though the transfer portal often makes it seem as if money trumps all other considerations, sometimes there are refreshing surprises. For Powell-Lee, at least, academics ultimately tipped the balance.

NIL

Trump ‘willing to put the federal government behind’ changes to NIL

Published

12 minutes ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

On the cusp of the 45th anniversary of their defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, the United States’ “Miracle on Ice” Olympic men’s hockey team was honored at the White House on Friday, Dec. 12 with Congressional Gold Medals.

It led into a brief discussion on the current state of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) in college sports when Team USA captain Mike Eruzione was asked about the topic by a reporter. Following a brief response from Eruzione, President Donald Trump joined the conversation and made a statement.

“Something ought to be done, and I’m willing to put the federal government behind it,” Trump said of overhauling NIL in college sports during a bill signing ceremony in the Oval Office. “And if it’s not done fast, you’re going to wipe out colleges.”

REQUIRED READING: ‘Miracle on Ice’ team honored with Congressional Gold Medals by President Trump

This is not the first time that Trump has spoken on the state of college athletics in a time where NIL and the transfer portal have taken over. He made similar remarks on “The Pat McAfee Show” during a phone call interview on Veterans Day.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives recently pulled the scheduled final vote for the Republican-backed SCORE Act that would have allowed the NCAA and its recently formed College Sports Commission to create and enforce national rules that have been under legal dispute in recent years.

The SCORE Act (Student Compensation And Opportunity Through Rights and Endorsements) had sought to provide more regulation and calm the chaotic environment created by the introduction of NIL compensation, revenue sharing and the transfer portal to college sports.

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump says ‘something ought to be done’ about NIL in college sports

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Here’s what Trump has to say about NIL in college sports

Published

1 hour ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

President Donald Trump isn’t a big fan of college athletes being paid for the use of their name, image and likeness.

In fact, he trashed NIL in response to a question about it Friday.

During a ceremony at the White House to honor the gold-medal winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a reporter asked about NIL deals and the transfer portal, noting the “Miracle on Ice” players were amateurs who didn’t get paid.

Team captain Mike Eruzione said he didn’t like it, but that’s the state of college sports today and “we have no control over that.”

Trump, though, said maybe there is something to do about it.

“I think the NIL is a disaster for sports. It’s horrible for the Olympics, and I think it’s actually horrible for the players,” he said.

Trump said colleges are cutting “lesser” sports, those that don’t bring in revenue but help train athletes for the Olympics.

“Those sports don’t exist because they’re putting all their money into football, and by the way, they’re putting too much money into football,” Trump said.

As NIL and now revenue sharing has entered college sports, many schools across the country are having to make tough decisions about whether to maintain Olympic or nonrevenue sports.

The House v. NCAA settlement allows universities to pay their athletes up to $20.5 million per year, which works out to about 22% of the average athletic department revenue at Power Four schools. The vast majority of the money goes to football and men’s basketball players, the two most revenue-generating sports at most universities.

“You can’t pay a quarterback $14 million to come out of high school. They don’t even know if he’s going to be a very good player,” Trump said. “Colleges cannot afford to pay the kind of salaries you’re hearing out there.”

The highest reported NIL payments for football players have been in the $6 million to $8 million range. But Trump said schools won’t be able to stop paying more and more to get the player they believe will win them a national championship.

“You’re going to have these colleges wipe themselves out. And something ought to be done and I’m willing to put the federal government behind it. But if it’s not done fast, you’re going to wipe out colleges. They’re going to get wiped out, including ones that do well in football,” Trump said.

The president didn’t specify what he thinks the federal government should do. Several bills regulating NIL have been filed in Congress, but none have gained traction.

“Colleges cannot afford to play this game, and it’s a very bad thing that’s happening,” he said.

Private equity enters college sports

Trump comments come as the University of Utah became the first school in the country to announce a deal with a private equity firm to infuse cash into its athletics program.

University administrators said the program has operated efficiently and generated a modest surplus over the years with the support of donors and student fees. But the decision to share revenues with athletes under the House settlement and the emergence of the transfer portal have added significant costs to the school.

The cost of supporting a nationally competitive athletics program has risen dramatically and far outpaces revenue growth, they said.

Utah intends to create a for-profit company called Utah Brands & Entertainment through its university foundation. It will partner with Otro Capital to run the commercial side of its sports program.

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Bailey, Rodriguez garner Walter Camp All-America honors

Published

2 hours ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech senior outside linebacker David Bailey and senior linebacker Jacob Rodriguez were both named first team All-Americans by the Walter Camp Foundation on Friday evening during the Home Depot College Football Awards Show on ESPN.

This is the first career All-America honor for both Bailey and Rodriguez, who became only the third set of Red Raider teammates to collect first team All-America honors in school history. Texas Tech had both linebacker Zach Thomas and defensive back Marcus Coleman represented on an NCAA-recognized All-America team in 1995, while the quartet of wide receiver Michael Crabtree, quarterback Graham Harrell and offensive linemen Rylan Reed and Brandon Carter were all recognized in 2008.

The Walter Camp All-America teams kick off the list of NCAA-recognized organizations that determine the NCAA’s annual consensus and unanimous All-America teams. The Associated Press All-America team will be unveiled Monday followed by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) on Tuesday, the Sporting News on Wednesday and the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) on Thursday.

Now in its 136th year as the nation’s oldest All-America team, the Walter Camp Foundation had not previously recognized a Red Raider since tight end Jace Amaro was a unanimous selection to the first team in 2013. Rodriguez joins Thomas (1994-95) and Thomas Howard (1976) as the only linebackers in program history to receive first team All-America honors. Bailey, meanwhile, became the third Red Raider defensive end or outside linebacker to be recognized on the first team, joining two other greats in Montae Reagor (1998) and Tyree Wilson (2022).

The All-America honor only adds to a memorable week for Rodriguez, who was also named the winner of the Bednark Award Friday evening during the ESPN broadcast. Rodriguez has collected the Butkus Award (nation’s top linebacker), the Bronko Nagurski Trophy (nation’s top defensive player), the Lombardi Award (nation’s top lineman or linebacker) and the Pony Express Award (nation’s top duo with Bailey) in the past week alone.

Rodriguez has been the most-disruptive player in college football this season as he enters the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl as the FBS leader with seven forced fumbles and ranks among the top-15 players nationally with 117 tackles. He is the first FBS player since 2005 to record at least five forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and four interceptions all in the same season.

His impact has bolstered a Texas Tech defense that leads the nation with 31 takeaways and ranks third nationally in scoring defense at 10.9 points per game. Rodriguez was responsible for nine takeaways himself — all in Big 12 play – thanks to his ability to punch the ball out and also read the quarterback in coverage. Rodriguez is currently the highest-rated player in all of college football, according to Pro Football Focus, grading out at 93.3 overall so far this season.

Bailey, meanwhile, leads possibly the best defensive line in college football this season with 13.5 sacks, which leads all power conference players and ranks second overall nationally entering bowl season. Bailey, who is also third in the FBS with 17.5 tackles for loss, is in the midst of his most-productive collegiate season after arriving from Stanford this offseason with 14.5 sacks for his career at the time, one more than his total this season under head coach Joey McGuire and outside linebackers coach C.J. Ah You. He is 1.5 sacks shy of the Texas Tech single-season sacks record of 15.0 that was set by Brandon Sharpe in 2009.

Pro Football Focus has credited Bailey with 74 pressures this season, easily the most in college football as Adam Trick of Miami (Ohio) ranks second with 66. Louisville’s Clev Lubin is the next-closest power conference player to Bailey with 61 pressures of his own. Bailey’s ability to get to the quarterback has also caused three forced fumbles, a pass breakup and a fumble recovery.

As a team, Texas Tech is the only team in the country to rank in the top five nationally for not only scoring defense and total defense but also total offense and total offense. The result has pushed Texas Tech to its first Big 12 Conference title and a 12-1 record, marking the most wins in a season in school history.

The Red Raiders await the winner of the College Football Playoff opening round game between No. 5 Oregon and No. 12 seed James Madision in the Capital One Orange Bowl. Kickoff on New Year’s Day is set for 11 a.m. CT with coverage provided on ESPN and the Texas Tech Sports Network.

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Georgia football’s Dontrell Glover, Bo Walker arrested for shoplifting

Published

3 hours ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Updated Dec. 12, 2025, 9:24 p.m. ET

Two Georgia football players were arrested Friday and charged with misdemeanor theft by shoplifting.

Starting offensive guard Dontrell Glover and running back Bo Walker were booked into the Clarke County Jail after 5:30 p.m. and released before 8 p.m, according to the jail’s online booking report. The arresting agency is the Athens-Clarke County Police.

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Matt Rhule endorses Nick Saban as commissioner for college football

Published

4 hours ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Amid all the complaints about the current state of college football, be it the College Football Playoff or NIL and the NCAA Transfer Portal, the only solution that has any consensus is the overwhelming desire for a “commissioner” to create and enforce rules and regulations across the sport.

And, whenever the topic of a college football commissioner comes up, one name always seems to be connected: Nick Saban. Of course, the 74-year-old former Alabama head coach-turned-ESPN College GameDay analyst has repeatedly shot down any such suggestion when it inevitably comes up.

“I don’t want to be in that briar patch of being a commissioner,” Saban told the Associated Press in late August. “But I do want to do everything I can to make it right.”

But now the call is coming from inside the house. This week, Nebraska head football coach Matt Rhule openly championed for Saban to accept the yet-to-be-created position during a discussion about the untenable current college football calendar on his House Rhules podcast.

“I can tell you this, I know most coaches, I know me, if that was one the table, I’d certainly vote yes,” Rhule said during Thursday’s episode of his podcast, House Rhules. “Because he’s been in the trenches, he has experience, he has the vision. And you also have to have someone who has the guts and the toughness to make hard decisions, because you’re not going to make everyone happy. That’s why the NFL has Roger Goodell, he’s going to do things, even if people don’t like them, he’s going to do what’s right for the game. And they protect the league.

“For us, our conferences are our leagues, so everyone is protecting their own conference, which is why things end up being maybe a little disjointed as a result,” Rhule concluded. “So, shoot, come on Coach Saban, do it, man. We need you.”

Saban has long been a proponent of more regulation and structure in the sport, especially after this summer’s passage of the House v. NCAA settlement that ended the NCAA’s outdated “amateur” model. The settlement ushered in revenue-sharing across college athletics, allowing programs to pay as much as $20.5 million to their student-athletes, with football teams expected to receive roughly 75% of that total annually. Of course, that has only created more issues, so much so that Congress is now getting involved.

“For years and years and years as coaches, and when we were players, we learned this, we’re trying to create value for our future,” Saban told the AP. “That’s why we’re going to college. It’s not just to see how much money we can make while we’re in college. It’s, how does that impact your future as far as our ability to create value for ourselves?”

That said, if Saban really wants to be part of the solution to what ails college football, Rhule knows the perfect way for him to make the biggest impact.

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The Clemson Insider

Published

5 hours ago

December 13, 2025

Your Sports Nation

CLEMSON — While Clemson continues to prepare to play Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl on Dec. 27, there are things happening inside the program that will help shape what takes place next year.

The next month is going to be the most important month Dabo Swinney’s program will have in a very long time.

Why?

There is a lot going on, whether it be through the transfer portal, NIL or coaching. There are a lot of moving parts right now and it is all important to next year’s team.

Though Swinney will not talk about next year’s team until this season is over, we can.

As we have reported, there are and there will be more changes to the coaching staff. There will also be more changes to the personnel.

The transfer portal officially opens on Jan. 2, and, as you know, several Tigers have already given their intentions to enter the portal. Four underclassmen have declared for the NFL Draft, as well.

Clemson welcomes 19 freshmen to the team, most of them will enroll in January. However, the Tigers will have two weeks to bring in some more talent from the portal.

How Swinney and the coaching staff attack the portal will be paramount to the 2026 team’s success?

It has been well documented Clemson has not handled the NIL and portal as well as other schools. You only need to look at the four previous seasons to see what I am talking about.

Since 2021, the Tigers are 37-16 (.698) with one College Football Playoff appearance. Granted, the Tigers did win ACC Championships in 2022 and ’24, but it is obvious the program has slipped a notch in this new era of college football.

Can the Tigers reach the top of the mountain, again?

I am not sure.

Let’s be honest, the NIL has hurt Clemson. Part of that is Clemson’s fault, part of that is just the way things are. It’s hard for Clemson to compete in the third-party NIL world with schools that can. That is one reason why the Tigers cannot sign 5-star prospects anymore.

While Clemson continues to struggle with the NIL, other schools within the ACC, continue to have success. ACC Champion Duke is a perfect example of this.

Before the NIL, Duke was irrelevant in football and there was no way they could compete with the Clemson’s and Florida State’s. These days, the Blue Devils own a two-game win streak against the Tigers.

Why?

Because they are more successful with the NIL.

Virginia is another example. Tony Elliott went to the portal and pulled 30 new players on a team that made it to the ACC Championship Game. He used revenue sharing and NIL funds to get the best players he could.

As we mentioned before, the changes in college football are very reminiscent of how new rules in college baseball affected the Clemson baseball program some 15 years ago. Clemson baseball has never fully recovered.

Will Clemson Football?

To do that, Clemson must change its philosophy when it comes to paying players from the portal.

This is like free agency in the NFL. You must go and pay for the best.

You must do what is best for the program, not worry if you hurt the feelings of a current player on the roster.

Look at it this way, Clemson is losing, potentially, three first-round picks—Peter Woods, Avieon Terrell and T.J. Parker—and one second-round pick in Antonio Williams. Those guys are all underclassmen. Who are the Tigers replacing them with?

Let me ask you this. How many first-round picks will next year’s roster have?

This is an important off-season. Swinney must make the right choices in the portal.

The Tigers cannot afford to go 4-4 in the ACC again, which is possible if you look at next year’s schedule.

Clemson will play Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina and Virginia at home in 2026. As well as visit California, Duke, Florida State and Syracuse. Look at that schedule, do you think the Tigers, with the current roster, can win the ACC next season?

This is why the next month is going to be so big for the Clemson Football program.

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