Dabo Swinney touts Clemson's stability over 'chaos' of portal - ESPN

CLEMSON, S.C. — With the transfer portal and drama surrounding it spinning out of control in recent weeks in college football, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney offered a wry smile Wednesday.

«We're just sitting back and watching, watching it all around us,» Swinney told ESPN. «It's a crazy time, although I'm not sure a lot of people in our sport should be surprised. I'm just glad we're not a part of it.»

Swinney, entering his 17th full season at Clemson, has been outspoken about the transfer portal and his reluctance to use it except as a means for filling gaps on his roster and not «trying to outbid people» for high school players and paying them large sums of money before they prove themselves in college.

«It's not just these last few weeks, but the last few years, and there certainly has been no rules, and whatever rules there were — if you tried to enforce them — then they would get changed, and you'd wait six months, and they would change again,» Swinney said. «So, yeah, there has been a ton of chaos, and it's like I told our staff. We're entering a really chaotic time.

»But the more chaos out there, the better it is for us because we're built for it."

Just in the past two weeks, quarterbacks Nico Iamaleava and Joey Aguilar swapped places — Iamaleava to UCLA and Aguilar to Tennessee — after Iamaleava skipped practice before the Vols' spring game and then entered the portal after wanting his NIL deal increased. Aguilar was with UCLA all spring but left after Iamaleava joined the Bruins. Aguilar had just transferred to UCLA from Appalachian State a few months earlier.

In addition, Iamaleava's younger brother, Madden, left Arkansas last week and plans to transfer to UCLA, leading Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek to