The first month of the college football season has come and gone, and the Clemson Tigers are somewhere none of us thought they would be.

The Tigers are 1-3, despite returning a plethora of players from last year’s ACC Championship team. No Clemson team has been here in 21 years.

Clemson is also 0-2 in ACC play for the first time in 15 years, and rank at the bottom of the conference.

It is a weird dynamic, especially since no one saw this coming. I mean no one.

The Tigers were the hands-on favorite to repeat as ACC Champions. Many figured they were a legitimate national championship contender, especially with so many back on the offensive side of the football.

Well, we were all wrong.

So, how did we get here? That is a good question.

If you think about it, we have seen this coming down the pipe for a while now. Since Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne and those guys said goodbye in 2020, the Clemson program has steadily declined.

In 2021, the Tigers went 10-3 and did not make the College Football Playoff for the first time since 2014. The 2022 season showed some promise, but the end result was another season without earning a playoff spot.

The 2023 campaign was not much better. Though Clemson won its last five games to finish 9-4, it marked the first time since 2010 the Tigers did not win 10 or more games in a season. It was also the first time Clemson was 4-4 in ACC play since that same 2010 season.

The Tigers bounced back last year and gave everyone some hope after winning the ACC and advancing to the first 12-team playoff. But that is not likely to happen this year, especially with Clemson losing so many games this early in the season.

So, how did we get here?

Let’s go back to 2021.

What happened in 2021?

In April of 2021, athletes were allowed to transfer one time during their college career and be immediately eligible at their new school. Three months later, the NCAA allowed student athletes across all divisions to engage in Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) activities, provided they comply with state and school rules.

Combine these two things with the transfer portal, which began in 2018, and college athletics was forever changed.

Some schools have adjusted to these changes and have continued to excel. Georgia won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022.

Michigan, who won the 2023 National Championship, Miami, Notre Dame and Texas have used them to return to the top of college football, while Ohio State continues to win without losing a beat. Then there are teams like Oregon and Penn State, who are right at the top as well.

Florida State has seen the good and the bad as a result of these rule changes, but right now it’s riding the wave of good.

Where is Clemson?

Clemson is still stuck in 2020, sort of.

Revenue sharing has helped the Tigers get in the game a little more, but not like one would think. It took a while for Clemson to embrace the changes of college football, especially head coach Dabo Swinney.

Swinney on NIL since 2021:

• “I’m not against NIL at all. I’m against anything that devalues education.”
• “I am against professionalizing college athletics where we get away from the collegiate model and the value of a degree and the value of an education.”
• “We built this program on NIL. We really did. It’s probably different than what you’re thinking, though. We built this program in God’s name, image, and likeness.”
• “We’re not going to get into a bidding war for players.” 

Swinney on the transfer portal since 2021:

• “Most of the guys in the portal aren’t good enough to play for us.”
• Supports stability over “chaos” of portal
• Clarified he is not entirely against using the portal if needed but prefers to focus on recruiting and developing high school talent.

Though his theory is still commendable, and you understand Swinney is building men and not just football players, other schools are using these things against Clemson.

Though Swinney has not totally embraced the changes, he is coming around. He uses NIL to retain players, which has worked out well for Clemson. He dipped into the transfer portal after the 2024 season and pulled Will Heldt, Tristan Smith and Jeremiah Alexander.

Imagine, though, if Swinney had embraced the transfer portal and NIL from the beginning. Where would Clemson be?

Swinney would have been the King of the Transfer Portal. No one can recruit better than Dabo Swinney.

If Swinney was playing with the same toys that everyone else had, it would have been no contest. Instead, Swinney has been playing with Lincoln Logs, while everyone else was playing with LEGOs.  

Even Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said recently that if there was a coach he would want his son to play for other than himself, it was Dabo Swinney.

However, by not embracing the transfer portal and NIL sooner, Swinney put Clemson in a tough spot. For one, Clemson fans followed his lead and did not embrace these changes soon enough.

They were against these things every bit as much as Swinney was at first.

What hurt Clemson, especially with fans following Swinney’s lead, is the other sports suffered as a result. These sports desperately could have used these resources to help their programs stay competitive, such as the baseball, volleyball and women’s basketball and soccer programs to name a few.

But more than anything, it hurt Clemson Football.

Imagine where Clemson would be now had Swinney embraced these changes sooner, maybe the Tigers would have won another national championship by now. Instead, they have not been as relevant as the other programs mentioned above and now, they are 1-3 and wondering what went wrong.