College football coaches need to surrender to the transfer portal, according to Nick Saban. The former Alabama coach said he had to “adapt” to keep winning in the NIL era and didn’t refuse change just because a certain way of running things worked in the past. His comments come on the heels of Dabo Swinney defending his transfer portal approach after Clemson became the only program in the Power Four not to accept a transfer during the 2024 cycle.

“Regardless of the circumstances in college football right now, you have to be able to adapt,” Saban said Thursday at the Jimmy Rane Foundation Golf Event. “We adapted throughout the years. We even won after Name, Image and Likeness. We had to adapt. We could not do things the same as we always did them. Every coach should be looking forward not backward. They can’t say, ‘Well, we always did it this way.’ Well, you can’t do it that way anymore. You need to be adaptable to the circumstance you’re in so you can be competitive with the competition that is adapting. It’s the most important thing.”

Alabama didn’t rank among the top acquirers of transfer talent during Saban’s final years in Tuscaloosa but took five players in 2022 and 2023. Swinney has landed just two transfers since the portal’s inception in 2021. Swinney defended his recruiting approach during this week’s ACC spring meetings.

“It’s not necessarily an intentional thing,” Swinney said regarding his zero portal commits. “There were a couple of guys we looked at. They have to love you, too. That’s the other part of it. And honestly, every player is technically a transfer. We just signed a whole class of guys transferring from high school. So we like our guys. We like our starters.”

Swinney doubled down on his emphasis on high school prospects over transfers during a SiriusXM interview Thursday. He placed college football transfers into three categories — none of which are fits for the Tigers.

“There’s three types of players in the portal,” Swinney said. “It’s really pretty simple. Most of the guys in the portal aren’t good enough to play for us. That’s just the reality of it… The majority of guys are in the portal because they want to have a chance to start somewhere. They’re not playing where they are. They’re not good enough to come in and play for us. We’d rather take a good high school player as long as we can get them, which we do, and you develop them.”

Swinney said the other two types of players in the portal are those involved in tampering and those just looking for a payout, neither of which is a fit for Clemson.

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“The second type of guy that goes in the portal is the one that’s only going in as a formality because the deal has already been done,” Swinney said. “He knows where he’s going before he ever goes in the portal. We’re not getting that guy. The third type of guy is going in the portal just to see what he can get, and we’re never going to win that war.”