What a disaster the sport of college football has become.
This portal cycle has revealed more chaos and lawlessness than ever, with short-term Clemson transfer signee Luke Ferrilli’s presumed flip to Ole Miss just one of many examples over the past few days.
In the case of Ferrelli, we’re not talking about one program just attempting to flip a player committed to another program. Ferrilli was signed. He was enrolled, attending classes and already taking part in team activities. Oh, and he was not even in the portal when Ole Miss began the poaching process.
That is the utter definition of tampering that Dabo Swinney has railed against repeatedly in recent years.
“The portal is not the problem. The NIL is not the problem. The problem is tampering,” Swinney said in December of 2023. “That is the problem. That is the problem in college football, and that can be fixed easy too, if they would let football people fix it. We do not usually get a vote in that. That is the biggest challenge we are dealing with, is that aspect of it.”
Ironically, Ole Miss is facing a similar situation with standout edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen. After signing a deal to return recently, Umanmielen just announced he was planning to hit the portal. Ole Miss is fighting back by refusing to enter the paperwork.
Pete Golding and Ole Miss have also been playing the victim card due to former head coach Lane Kiffin doing his best to poach some of their players and take them with him to LSU. You know that old saying, “Rules for thee, but not for me?” In another ironic twist, former Clemson LB TJ Dottery (formerly TJ Dudley), entering the portal late and heading to LSU, is what actually set all of this Ferrelli stuff off.
Make no mistake, Clemson is not the only school to fall victim to this kind of scenario since the portal opened on January 2. One of the most publicized squabbles took place when Washington QB Demond Williams Jr. signed a deal to return to the Huskies, and four days later, went public with his intention to transfer.
The Huskies held Williams’ feet to the fire, and despite him hiring an attorney, he announced he would return to Washington the next day.
Duke QB Derian Mensah entered the portal on Friday, despite being signed on with Duke for 2026. The Blue Devils put a lot of resources into building a team around Mensah, and after all of those efforts, their star QB was gone, presumably heading to Miami.
As previously reported by The Clemson Insider, we already know Clemson is exploring all legal options available to the university when it comes to Ferrelli’s abrupt exit.
Outside of that, the biggest question might just center on how Swinney himself responds. Again, the longtime Clemson head coach has spent a lot of time railing against the rampant tampering that has come about due to the lawlessness the sport is currently experiencing. Lawsuits have stripped the NCAA of any real power when it comes to the portal, tampering and NIL. Conference commissioners are only worried about the leagues they oversee. Someone needs to be looking out for the sport’s best interest, and right now, no one is doing that.
Maybe Swinney is the one who actually attempts to tear it all down. To this point, no coach has been willing to call out specifics regarding members of their own profession tampering. If anyone was going to call it out publicly it would be Swinney. It’s quite possible that the next time he steps to the podium, he just might bring receipts and start naming names.
Photo by Bart Boatwright