The Opening Drive 1/25: Dabo Calls Out Tampering, and He's Not Wrong
Dabo is tired of tampering and calls out a specific school.
The transfer portal and NIL have done a lot of good for football, both for the college game and the NFL. However, with all of the good comes a lot of bad. It’s no secret that in this day and age of agents, contracts, and paid players, lines are being blurred and crossed.
Dabo Swinney has always been the poster boy for “aww shucks.” Dabo once went on record saying, “As far as paying players and professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else.” It also seemed to take Clemson some time to embrace the transfer portal, but that mindset has finally modernized.
On Friday, Dabo’s frustrations with the amount of tampering going on boiled over and went public. He brought the receipts, and the shrapnel was directed at Ole Miss and Pete Golding. Those frustrations stem from the recruitment of transfer portal linebacker Luke Ferrelli. Ferrelli entered the portal from Cal and signed with Clemson. He not only signed but enrolled at Clemson before entering the portal again and ultimately ending up at Ole Miss. Ole Miss continued to contact the linebacker, with Golding even texting him while he was in an 8 a.m. class.
This will be very interesting to monitor, but at the end of the day, the most likely outcome is that nothing happens.
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Ole Miss Isn’t The Only School Tampering
This situation isn’t exclusive to Ole Miss, as we’ve seen multiple cases this portal cycle that indicate tampering. Demond Williams, the Washington quarterback, was announced as having signed a new agreement with the Huskies and then wanted to enter the portal. The assumption is that another school, or schools, offered him more money to jump ship.
The Darian Mensah situation has also brought tampering into the mainstream. Mensah, the Duke quarterback, had signed paperwork to remain a Blue Devil before having a “change of heart.” He entered the portal, with Miami being the assumed destination. However, Duke fought back and filed suit in an attempt to block the move.
Will It Ever End?
While we can assume tampering in certain situations, and it is now being proven in others, it will never stop. There are plenty of hands in these cookie jars, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. No matter what cliché you use, one thing is certain: money talks. College athletes do not have to be represented by a licensed agent, and that is a massive problem. Schools don’t have to be in direct contact with players to be having these negotiations, so the deniability will always be there. Until players are considered employees and bound to some sort of collective bargaining agreement, it’s always going to be the Wild West.
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