Clemson football player was offered $200,000 to transfer, report says

Ahead of the Gator Bowl, Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney went on an unprompted rant about the problem that roster tampering has become.

A recent report shed some light on his frustrations.

As part of a larger story examining how Clemson football is managing the name, image and likeness (NIL) era of the sport, the website TigerIllustrated.com reported that a backup player for the Tigers was offered six figures to transfer from Clemson to another ACC school.

“More and more people inside and outside of college athletics are starting to grasp the reality that collective bargaining and actual pay for play is coming,” Larry Williams and Paul Strelow wrote in the Feb. 4 story. “In fact, Clemson had one reserve get offered $200,000 to transfer to a conference rival in recent months, per our contacts. A backup.”

The player, who did not transfer from Clemson, wasn’t identified.

Neither was the “conference rival.”

But the TigerIllustrated.com report put a hard number on what a “pay for play” inducement might look like for a college football player, illustrating the new reality of the sport. If a Clemson backup commands $200,000, how much money could be floated to a big-time starter?

The NCAA has allowed athletes to benefit from their name, image and likeness since summer 2021 while banning the use of NIL for recruiting inducements. But coaches have long complained about the “wild west” aspect of the NIL environment that allows schools to sway recruits with monetary offers.

Leading into Clemson’s Gator Bowl matchup with Kentucky, Swinney specifically took aim at tampering — essentially, coaches from programs getting an impermissible head start on recruiting by contacting players on Clemson’s roster before they formally entered the transfer portal.

Swinney didn’t directly say any Clemson players had been tampered with. But twice during a Zoom video call previewing that bowl, he criticized tampering unprompted and called it the dominant problem facing coaches when it comes to roster maintenance.

“The portal’s not the problem,” Swinney said in December. “NIL’s not the problem. The problem is tampering. That’s the problem. That is the problem in college football, and that could be fixed easily, too, if they would let football people fix it. But we don’t usually get a vote in that.”

The Tigers ended up having nine scholarship players leave during the winter portal window that ran from Dec. 4 to Jan. 2. Clemson’s departures included a number of longtime reserves and/or graduates looking for playing time — an annual occurrence for the program — but some surprising departures, too.

Starting junior wide receiver Beaux Collins (Notre Dame) and starting junior safety Andrew Mukuba (Texas) left the team. So did sophomore cornerback Toriano Pride Jr. (Missouri) and true freshman defensive end David Ojiegbe (Pitt).

Swinney insinuated in December that players among that group — or other players still on his roster, as indicated by the TigerIllustrated.com report — had been tampered with by other coaches and programs.

“It’s unfortunate that that’s just the way it is,” he said.