I can confirm that using Clemson and Dabo Sweeney in Season 4, along with adding the 100 preorder points to him and leveling him up to level 100, Delay Sunday, does not seem to work as intended. I am recruiting players and redshirting them. In their freshman (redshirt) year, they typically start as backups and become starters in their sophomore (redshirt) year before entering the draft. However, they have a "None" for persuasion chance, which prevents me from persuading them to stay.
In Season 4, I focused on maximizing all of my persuasion perks and utilized all available delay Sunday perks, yet I have not seen a "None" player choose to stay. Since there are only options to adjust player count for portal transfers this season and not the draft, my team is going to be in a poor position to start season 5.
On a side not most, if not all of these players are at least a 90 overall. It is understandable that they may want to leave, but why have the skill and please make it refundable if things are not working as intended.