Since the NIL and transfer portal era began, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has been maligned by the media, especially the national media, by his lack of using the transfer portal.
Maybe some of it is warranted after the Tigers slipped from being a national powerhouse to last year’s mediocre 7-6 record. Some say Swinney is too loyal and is not willing to change with the times.
Swinney’s philosophy is still to focus on high school recruiting and developing players through his program, and then go get a player or two from the transfer portal to maybe help with a position of need due to attrition from injuries, players leaving school early for the transfer portal or the NFL.
However, Swinney is not the only coach with this philosophy. There are other coaches who think the same way. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is one of them.
“We think that our investment in our player is better than your investment in your player that I would get from you in the portal,” Smart said. “We just keep thinking that if we pour into our guys, that our development is going to be better than taking a guy that’s second-, third-, fourth year that somebody else developed.”
You might as well put Swinney’s name after that quote.
However, Smart does not get nearly as criticized for putting the same emphasis on high school recruiting. Of course, the Bulldogs have made the College Football Playoff four times in the transfer portal and NIL era, including back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022. That helps with perception.
However, Smart and Swinney appear to still being doing it their way. Since Smart became Georgia’s head coach in 2016, Smart and Swinney lead the country, among active head coaches, with the most players selected in the NFL Draft. They are proving that identifying and developing players through the high school programs still works.
The Bulldogs still went out and signed 10 players from the portal, while Clemson signed 12. However, both programs’ portal numbers are low compared to other schools in their own conferences that loaded up with 20, 25 and even 40 players.
The focus at Georgia is just like Clemson’s – they both want to retain as many players as they can.
“The consistency and performance is probably what I’m most proud of over the last 10 to 11 years, including this season,” Smart said. “And the consistency and performance is what Georgia has been built on. Can we repeatedly do and be successful regardless of who comes in and out of your program?
“This season, like many others, we chose to study a successful brand or team.”
That team was the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“They talked about being uncommon and how you can be uncommon in today’s world. And our guys took a week-by- week section of being uncommon,” Smart said. “Believing in the success of others is greater than the success of yourself in a day and age when that’s not normal. That is uncommon to be more proud… We enjoy the success of others more than the success of ourselves. And that’s what our team and program is built on.”