Dabo Swinney just saw the lead Clemson should follow in the transfer portal

In perhaps the most important loss in Clemson football history, the Tigers might finally be joining the modern college football world in the transfer portal. Clemson had been so beyond reluctant to take part in it for years and years. Head coach Dabo Swinney was dead-set on winning his kind of way with his kind of guys who only get offers from Clemson out of high school. They must commit right away.

That worked for a while, but the dawn of NIL changed everything. Clemson's old-fashioned way of doing things eventually left the Tigers in the dust. Swinney and his coaching staff did not take NIL seriously and took the transfer portal even less seriously. This resulted in Clemson missing out on the College Football Playoff the three previous years prior to this one, culminating in a first-round exit.

After Clemson's most recent defeat to Texas, it seemed as though Swinney was finally willing to turn a new leaf. He said at the podium that changes would be coming to Clemson, but not of the coaching staff variety. His two coordinators of note in Wes Goodwin and Garrett Riley were not the problem this year. The Tigers' biggest issue was that that plagues most playoff-caliber teams in a lack of depth.

Fate would have it, the ideal blueprint to bring Clemson back to prominence is what Texas just did.

Clemson should pattern itself after Texas in the transfer portal era

Prior to Texas winning the Big 12 last year and making the College Football Playoff in back-to-back seasons this year, the Longhorns were a shell of themselves as a program for a decade-plus. The Longhorns got incredibly decadent in the latter part of the Mack Brown era. The national championship loss to Alabama in 2009 was the beginning of the end that resulted in dysfunction.

Under Sarkisian, he bet big on his coordinators and coaching staff. Texas made it a point to be active in both the transfer portal and in high school recruitment to turn this thing around in a hurry. More importantly, Texas always used high school recruiting as the basis for its long-term success, only using the transfer portal as a means to complement what they were doing on National Signing Day.

In a way, this is a model a team that is not about to completely sell out and change its program's identity can honestly get behind. Clemson is a program like Texas with enough national gravitas historically to be in consideration for not just the type of recruits coming out of high school, but also the best college players who enter the transfer portal. I think that a great lesson could be learned here.

Clemson does not need to reinvent the wheel, but rather take a page or two out of Texas' playbook.