Till graduation do we part: Swinney responds on whether he would cut players

Swinney says he would not cut a player that puts in the work (Photo by Merrell Mann).

David Hood · Senior Writer · 2 hours ago

CLEMSON – Till graduation do we part.

Head coach Dabo Swinney went in-depth on his feelings on the transfer portal, tampering, and cutting players during his Tuesday press conference. Swinney spent the first few minutes looking ahead to this week’s opponent, Furman, before he was asked about players leaving and having to add players through recruiting or the portal.

Some college coaches will cut a scholarship player – take away the scholarship from a player who isn’t producing or performing at a certain level – and Swinney said that will never happen under his watch.

“No, man, as long as the kid does what he's supposed to do here, he's gonna have an opportunity to graduate from Clemson,” Swinney said. “That's just the way it is. It's gonna always be that way as long as I'm gonna be the head coach. Kid comes to Clemson; he's a good kid. If he's not a good enough player, that's on us. As long as he goes to class, he's a great effort guy, you know, he's a good citizen? It's till graduation do we part. That's just the way it is.”

Swinney said he is proud of Clemson’s track record in graduating players.

“We've led the nation in graduation, too, the last three years," Swinney said. “And for a long time, we've been top 10 academically around here for 14 years. That's the number one thing in this program is graduation. Sometimes kids get hurt, sometimes you have high hopes for a guy, maybe he just doesn't develop quite like you thought. But no, that's not who we are.”

Swinney declined to give a portal number for this offseason, but said he will let everyone know what is needed.

“But when we do decide what we need, I'm gonna let y'all advertise it for me. I'm gonna let y'all tweet it out,” he said. “And because I don't have social media, I'm gonna have to count on y'all to tweet it out for me. Coach Swinney says they need a ‘boom’ and call 1-800-Dabo.com. You know, we'll need somebody.

"So I'll let y'all advertise that for me when we get to that point.”

Early Signing Day this year is December 3rd-5th, while the portal won’t open until January 2nd and will close January 16th, and Swinney said he is glad the two aren’t close together.

“I love the fact that the high school recruiting is not getting disrupted because it was all right there together,” Swinney said. “So you can really focus on your high school recruits and then you can focus on what you got to do in the portal. Because, like I said, if you don't, if you can't fill your need, like for us, if we don't get what we need out of the high school pool, or we have a guy that's committed, that all of a sudden decommits late, and we've had that happen, and now all of a sudden you've got a gap, but now you've got more time to fill that gap, as opposed to the way it was. It was all just kind of right there together.”