Welcome to the new age of college football where tampering is not only allowed, but encouraged. The sport enables a no-bars-hold philosophy where a player can sign with a school and, before the inks dry, a rival coach is already reaching out to said player and trying to steal them. College football welcomed this approach when they allowed NIL and the transfer portal to deconstruct the game.
Dabo Swinney calling out Pete Golding for literally texting one of Clemson’s players in the middle of class is the only way to bring some sort of order to this crazy system that’s not the norm in college football.
Dabo Swinney calls out Ole Miss coach Pete Golding directly, saying that Golding texted Luke Ferrelli during his 8 a.m. class at Clemson.
— Grace Raynor (@gmraynor) January 23, 2026
"I know you're signed, what's the buyout?"
“I know you're signed, what's the buyout?” was apparently what Golding said to Clemson player Luke Ferrelli, per The Athletic’s Grace Raynor.
You can’t even tamper this badly and blatantly in professional sports. So why would it be non-punishable in collegiate sports? Every coach knows tampering exists and there are no rules against it. Maybe this — and more coaches getting called out — will finally change a broken system.
Pete Golding is just doing what the NCAA is quietly encouraging
Is the NCAA blatantly allowing coaches to tamper? No. But by not having any enforcement on tampering, they’re essentially allowing it to happen. That’s why teams need to be more aggressive in bringing this up as a problem. Coaches complain about how they lose players to the portal every year and hint at coaches getting in touch with their players before the transfer portal window is even open.
Boise State talked about a school offering one of their players more NIL money after the Broncos’ 2024 College Football Playoff loss to Penn State. This is the reality teams face, but loosely talking about it isn’t the answer. Directly calling out which coaches are actually the ones colluding and tampering is the only way things can start to get resolved.
It’s the small schools and the smaller Power 4 schools that have all the power to change this. Unfortunately, they probably won’t say anything because some of the other P4 schools are probably doing the same thing. This is what college football has come to and unfortunately, there’s no easy fix.
If there was, maybe we would already see new changes like we do in the College Football Playoff.
Why more teams don’t call out blatant tampering moves by other college coaches
Maybe there’s fear of being blackballed by “snitching” on other programs or maybe nobody wants to be the bad guy, but right now, college football programs essentially govern themselves with oversight from the conferences. It’s up to the other coaches to hold each other accountable when it comes to tampering.
Teams also might not feel the need to call out specific coaches because instead of fighting it, they can simply join the tampering circle. When you look at the coaches that have questioned the process, it’s been the Power 4 conference teams that are tampering and calling each other out.
If you can’t beat it, join it and that’s something teams are starting to realize. Which is why more restrictions around when players and coaches can talk should be enforced. Imagine if tampering in college football was treated like illegal recruiting of high school players. If coaches lost scholarships, were heavily fined and even banned from the CFP for a period of time, coaches would take it seriously.
But until the coaches that have the problem make a bigger deal about it, nothing will change. So yes, Dabo Swinney was right to call out Pete Golding for deliberately going after one of his players after he was already signed. We need more Dabo’s taking a stand if anything’s going to change.