CLEMSON — Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has always said he is against the professionalization of college athletics.

However, when he was told by a member of the media earlier this week that it appears things are headed that way, especially in college football, Swinney said, “We will see.”

Never in the history of the sport has there been so much turmoil surrounding college football. With the way the NIL is being used as unrestricted free agency through the transfer portal, players being tampered with among other things, the conversation of professionalizing student-athletes is becoming more real by the day.

What concerns Swinney is how this hurts the student-athlete. He feels no one is considering the consequences for those whose athletic careers are over once they leave college.

“The best thing for coaches, in the kind of world we are in right now, is for them to be employees. The worst thing? Is for them to be employees,” Swinney said. “That is not a world we want for eighteen-year-olds.

“I think we lost our way.”

Swinney was once again adamant he is all for NIL.

“I think the NIL is awesome. I really am (for it),” he said. “I am all for enhancing the scholarship however you want, but I also understand the reality that ninety-eight percent of these kids are not going to play in the NFL. We need to educate our young people in this society.

“Nobody talks about the value of an education anymore.”

According to Swinney, Clemson Football gives its scholarship players anywhere from $125,000 to $145,000 in scholarship money. He said $30,000 to $45,000 of that is cash in hand.

“That is not even counting the NIL,” he said.

Swinney says college athletics has created some great opportunities for its student-athletes. But he said there is more they can do, and they should do to help the student-athlete.

“I just want to see us incentivize education. There are so many things we can do,” he said. “We can create 401ks, like the real world, right? If you take your money out early, there is a penalty.

“These are 18-year-old kids leaving home for the first time in their life. We are sometimes setting them up for failure.”

Swinney does not want to see college football get to a place where they are firing an 18- or 19-year-old athlete because he or she does not run as fast as they thought they would.

“There will be a lot that will come down the pipe down the road,” he said. “I love what I do. I love the challenge of it. I love the challenge of putting the team together and focusing on my guys. Focusing on helping fulfill the purpose of this program and really the purpose of my life, which is to glorify God, to be a great husband and father and use this platform of education and football to build great men.

“That is my purpose. That is what I do. That is what I wake up and do. That is what drives me. None of the rest of it drives me. That is what has always driven me. None of that has changed.”

Swinney believes a lot of great things will eventually come about in the sport, but…

“There will probably be some bad things happen along the way that we will all learn from and somewhere down the line somebody will say, ‘We got to be a little smarter in this area.’”

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