Clemson players explain why they stayed loyal to Tigers despite tampering
Cade Klubnik, Peter Woods and T.J. Parker are Clemson through and through.
That didn’t stop other top college football teams from reaching out to them indirectly this offseason and trying to convince them to leave the Tigers via the transfer portal.
Speaking at the ACC Kickoff media event on July 24, Klubnik, Woods and Parker all either directly or indirectly confirmed that other programs made a run at them and their services shortly after Clemson lost to Texas in the first round of the College Football Playoff on Dec. 21.
Those efforts were met with a collective stiff arm.
There was no swaying Klubnik, Clemson’s star senior quarterback. Or Woods, a freaky athletic defensive tackle. Or Parker, one of the country’s best pass rushers.
To hear them tell it, tampering works hard. But Clemson works harder.
“I’m here for the long haul, and that’s what it is,” Klubnik said. “Sure, other teams tried and whatever. But, obviously, it wasn’t easy to pull me away from here.”
“Why would you leave a place like this with an opportunity like this?” Woods said.
“I would never leave,” Parker said. “This is home.”
Clemson’s impressive retention rate
They aren’t alone in that thinking. After going 10-4, winning the ACC championship and appearing in the CFP for the first time in five years, coach Dabo Swinney’s Clemson program did something that’s becoming rarer and rarer nowadays:
It held onto its best players.
The Tigers return 16 of their 22 starters in 2025 — eight on offense, eight on defense — and their six departures were seniors who’d exhausted their eligibility.
Outside of Klubnik, Woods and Parker, Clemson’s returning starters include reigning first team All-ACC wide receiver Antonio Williams and right tackle Blake Miller; dynamic sophomore receivers Bryant Wesco Jr. and T.J. Moore; linebacker and reigning ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year Sammy Brown; and junior cornerback Avieon Terrell, another projected NFL first-rounder.
“These guys can leave any time they want,” Swinney said. “They have to choose, first of all, to come, and then they have to stay. I just think that says a lot about how we put it together on the front end, recruiting guys that really align with our purpose.”
Obviously, there’s a financial component.
Clemson committed 86% of its revenue sharing pool to football, which gave the program a roughly $15.5 million salary cap for player retention and acquisition — and that’s before additional, “stackable” NIL earnings for individual players.
The website TigerIllustrated.com reported earlier this year that Klubnik will make about $2.5 million this year, and Woods is one of three other millionaires on the 2025 roster. Everyone notable on the roster has signed a financial aid agreement.
‘There’s no point in me leaving’
But Clemson players said their decisions to stay put rose above dollars.
Klubnik, for example, valued Swinney and Clemson’s steady commitment to him after a rough first year as a starter in 2023. A conversation with Swinney in his office — “Cade, I believe in you. Let’s go to work” — was top of mind after he racked up 4,102 yards of total offense and 43 touchdowns in 2024 and drew the attention of others. Klubnik did not specify which schools tried to get him to transfer.
“You have to choose every year, you know?” Klubnik said. “That’s what college football has come down to. For me, it was never even a choice. It was easy.”
Woods, who’s expected to leave Clemson for the NFL after his junior year, had a similar experience. He was sitting on stage with Parker and Klubnik as Swinney talked from the podium about Clemson’s retention and gestured to the trio.
“These guys, they could all go wherever they want to go,” Swinney said.
Woods immediately started nodding and smiling.
He knew exactly what Swinney was getting at — tampering, an open secret in college football that is rarely if ever punished. For him, though, the chance to do something special with Clemson in 2025 trumped any other opportunities out there.
Not that he was looking.
“After the Texas game we were in the locker room going, ‘Yeah, this ain’t happening again,’’ Woods said. “This feeling that we felt, when we got to the top of the mountain and saw it and we couldn’t finish? I’ll never go out like that again.”
Parker said he and his parents had the same conversation after the Texas game: He wasn’t going anywhere. He had great relationships with his coaches. He had lifelong friends on the team, including Woods. He’d even met his future fiancée at Clemson – Parker and Tigers volleyball player Aźyah Dailey got engaged in May.
“Why give up all that to go chase the dollar sign?” Parker said his mom told him.
“Clemson has blessed me with an opportunity I’m forever grateful for,” he added. “There’s no point in me leaving if I have everything I want here.”
