As long as Dabo Swinney is head football coach at Clemson, he will be the one in charge of making final decisions on the Tigers’ roster.

During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Swinney was asked about the possibility of hiring someone to come in and make roster decisions for his program.

“I am going to make the roster decisions as the head coach,” Swinney said. “I don’t make them all by myself. Collectively, that is what we do. But we are not going to hire somebody to come in and say, ‘Hey, this is your roster.'”

With the money now involved in college football, including revenue-sharing and NIL, along with the transfer portal creating year-to-year free agency, managing a roster has never been more challenging. In fact, the sport is starting to more closely resemble professional football with each passing year, and schools are starting to set up personnel departments much like what is seen with NFL teams.

General managers are being hired all across the country to run those departments and handle those kinds of decisions at many schools in this era, which allows the head coaches to spend more time focusing on the actual coaching.

Clemson has its own general manager in Jordan Sorrells, who plays a big part in negotiating deals with high school recruits and portal players, as well as the time spent on retaining players on the current roster. But it is Swinney who has the final say on how his roster is constructed.

With the Tigers going just 7-6 a season ago after coming into the season ranked inside the Top 5, and having already dropped three games this season, many critics of Swinney have suggested hiring a general manager with full roster control is the way to go.

However, Swinney is pushing back against that notion, believing that in college football, it is the head coach who should have the final say.

“You got to recruit — you can not just draft them. You got to recruit them,” Swinney added. “I think who the head coach is, who is coaching, running meetings, who the position coaches are, all this stuff matters in college football. You can’t just pick who you want. Everybody’s got money, so you’ve got to recruit. That part won’t change.”