CLEMSON — When Dabo Swinney spoke to the media last spring, he made it clear he never had any intention of going into the transfer portal and bringing in an experienced quarterback to compete in Clemson’s quarterback race.

“If you take a quarterback, then you’re losing two, and I don’t want to lose the guys we got,” Swinney said.

Would losing two guys be such a bad thing?

Swinney lost one quarterback, though he changed positions. Chris Denson moved over to wide receiver after he dropped on the depth chart following the spring. Christopher Vizzina, who started the LSU game, and freshman Tait Reynolds were named the top two quarterbacks after spring practices.

I get his concern not to lose Reynolds and fellow freshman Brock Bradley. However, if Vizzina left after a quarterback competition against an experienced quarterback, would that have mattered?

You still have the talented freshman and likely Trent Pearman, the veteran backup, which he is more than qualified to be while the freshmen get the experience they need.

After watching how Vizzina and Reynolds struggled in Clemson’s 51-10 loss to LSU on Saturday night, it was obvious the Tigers could have used a more savvy veteran at quarterback.

I doubt the result would have been any different, but I firmly believe the Tigers would not have lost by 41 points with an experienced veteran quarterback.

Granted, the loss to LSU was not all on Vizzina and Reynolds. Their offensive line was horrible, which we already documented in detail earlier.

Do not get me wrong, Vizzina would have been a great story if it turned out to work. It’s rare to see a young man in this age of college football stay committed to a school, especially after waiting three years to become the starter. And Swinney staying loyal to Vizzina is great as well.

Look, no one loves a good story more than me. However, the fans do not care about good stories.

The fans want to win, and they want to win now. And Clemson needs to win.

Getting a quarterback out of the transfer portal would have helped solve that problem.

What’s really disappointing about all of this is Clemson might have had a couple of options had Swinney decided to pursue a transfer quarterback.

The Clemson Insider spoke directly with former Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles. He told TCI back in January he would love to hear from Clemson and would be interested in going there. However, he never heard from Clemson, and he ended up at Northwestern where he is playing under former Oregon head coach Chip Kelly.

TCI also heard former Harvard quarterback Jaden Craig might have been interested in coming to Clemson had the Tigers reached out. Craig, of course, is now the quarterback at TCU.

But we were told Swinney shut down those possibilities and decided he was not going to the portal for a quarterback because he felt he already had his starting quarterback on campus.

It seems Swinney was wrong. Clemson needed to go get an experienced quarterback from the portal, and the sad thing about it is they would have had plenty of good choices to choose from.

You have to think Chiles and Craig would not have been the only quarterbacks interested in Clemson. I guess we will never know.