Clemson’s Head Coach Embraces New Reality of NIL in College Sports

The Clemson Tigers' head coach has long been against NIL, but is starting to change his tune.

Nov 16, 2024; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney reacts against the Pittsburgh Panthers during the second quarter at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney has long been outspoken against the transfer portal, going so far as to have only three incoming transfers since 2021, as well as being against the idea of student-athletes being paid for play.

Swinney has been so against it, that he famously said in 2014 that he would quit coaching college football should it ever come to be.

Fast-forward 10 years and Name, Image, and Likeness is alive and well, growing more and more every year, with the most popular of student-athletes bringing in multi-million dollar sponsorships on a regular basis.

With NIL now a common practice in collegiate athletics, Swinney has begun to change his tune on the issue.

"Nobody's gonna have more money than Clemson. Nobody," the coach recently said to Grace Raynor of The Athletic. "For the first time ever. That'll be good."

This was in response to the House of Representatives being expected to approve a settlement that will allow athletic departments to share 22 percent of their revenue with their student-athletes, with a cap expected to be around $20.5 million per school, a pool that each school will have to distribute among all of their athletes in every sport that they participate in.

"Those are decisions that you have to make year-to-year but everybody will have the same money, and when I say nobody's gonna have more money than Clemson, that's because of the commitment from our administration," Swinney said.

Student-athletes will still have their outside opportunities to make money through NIL, but Swinney is encouraging fans and alumni to help their efforts through donations.

There was a time not so long ago when Swinney was one of the more highly-regarded coaches in the sport, leading the program to four National Championship games and winning two of those in a five-season stretch from 2015 to 2019.

This year, the Tigers are 9-2 and sit in third in the Atlantic Coast Conference behind the SMU Mustangs (first) and the Miami Hurricanes (second; holding the tie-breaker over Clemson), with one game left to play.

As things currently stand, the Tigers will seemingly be on the outside looking in at the College Football Playoffs for another year, which would mark the fourth time in as many years that they have missed out on the big dance.

However, the future could be looking brighter for the program with Swinney changing his tune on NIL, and it could even see him change course on his opinion of the transfer portal, too.