When running back Tavien Feaster placed his name in the transfer portal on April 24, it was really the first time Clemson had a player do such.
Former quarterback Kelly Bryant eventually went into the NCAA’s transfer portal, one of the first to do so, but it came a week or so after he left the school following Week 4 of the 2018 football season.
So, Feaster’s journey into the transfer portal, which means a player is now allowed to talk to any school he wants to while he finishes up the semester or gets his degree at his original school, was the first such experience for head coach Dabo Swinney and his program.
“I have never really dealt with it to be honest with you,” Swinney said Thursday to a small group of reporters, including The Clemson Insider prior to IPTAY’s last Prowl & Growl event of the spring in Florence, S.C.
In Swinney’s April 24th statement on Feaster’s decision to enter the transfer portal, Swinney states, “Tavien has informed us that he has entered the transfer portal with the intention to finish his degree at Clemson by August and continue his college career somewhere else.”
In recruiting, Swinney has had a long-standing policy that if a recruit still has the intention of visiting other schools then he encourages them not to commit to Clemson at that time and instead finish the recruiting process. When they are ready to commit and they commit to Clemson, then he asks that they be “all in” and not talk with anyone else. He wants them to be committed to Clemson, like Clemson is committed to them.
Based on what Swinney said on Thursday, it sounds the same way when it comes to the transfer portal.
“I think when you enter the transfer portal, it just says you are leaving,” Swinney said. “That is what it says to me. There is really nothing else. To me there is nothing different. That is how I look at it.”