Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney believes many college athletes around the nation will benefit from the NCAA’s decision to give all fall sport athletes, even those who compete this season, an extra year of eligibility.

Junior defensive end Xavier Thomas is one of the Tigers who has an opportunity to reap the benefits of the NCAA’s eligibility extension, which was voted on by the Division I board of directors last week.

The Tigers had been planning to redshirt Thomas this season, as he had COVID-19 earlier this summer and dealt with some complications from it. The plan for the Tigers was to hold Thomas out until the end of the season and then play him in the maximum of four games that athletes are allowed to compete in and still maintain their redshirt status.

But now, thanks to the NCAA’s decision and the additional year of eligibility that will be available to Thomas, he can work his way back and then play in more than four games once he’s able to return. Swinney said at the beginning of fall camp that Thomas was “nowhere near where he needs to be to play football,” but he has made a lot of progress since then according to Swinney following Wednesday’s scrimmage.

“We knew he was going to be ready – and he’s actually doing well – but we knew he would be ready here at some point,” Swinney said. “We worked him back into practice, but our plan was to try to hold him and get him ready for the latter part of the season. So now, we don’t have to worry about that. He can get back and play whenever he’s ready to go – he can play five games, seven games, eight games – it doesn’t matter, the objective is still going to be served, but he still has to be ready.

“He’s still a work in progress, but he’s doing really well. He’s responding well to everything, been very engaged, so been pleased with him.”

In Swinney’s opinion, the NCAA made the right call in granting fall sport athletes another year of eligibility, even though he knows the decision will present plenty of challenges for his program in terms of roster management.

“It’s definitely going to be challenging moving forward on how it’s all going to shake out, but it’s the right thing to do for these players all across the country,” he said. “We’ll figure out all the complexities of it later. I don’t really know right now how that is going to shake out because basically everybody on your roster that’s on the team in 2020 basically has another year. So, basically your freshmen have five years to play five. Your redshirt freshmen and redshirt sophomores and redshirt juniors technically could get six years, if they wanted. Not everybody is going to do that, and you’ll manage that as you go through it.

“But, I have a lot of questions and there’s a lot of unknowns as far as how we will manage it on the back end, how things are going to count, midyears, all that … There’s a lot of questions, but at the end of the day, it was the right decision. I’m super happy for our guys. Freshmen coming to college, they’re excited about their experience, and this is going to be a different experience. Seniors, their last year… So, I think they got it right, and it is going to create some complexities in the back end, but it was definitely the right thing to do.”

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