Getty Image / Megan Briggs
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney is one of the premier coaches of his generation. The Alabama alum has captured two national titles and played for two more over a dynastic 2010s decade at Clemson.
He’s benefitted from a weak ACC, however. No other conference team has made the College Football Playoff since the inaugural year in 2014, when Florida State made it. Since then, it could be argued that no other team has come particularly close to a playoff berth.
The last two years haven’t been up to the lofty standards that Swinney established. Clemson has missed the College Football Playoff each of the last two seasons and has lost six combined games. So, it would make sense that Swinney would support the expanded playoff to twelve teams that is set to come to college football in 2024. Instead, he does not like it at all.
Dabo joined former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy on McElroy’s podcast, Always College Football. And, he sounded off on the college football playoff.
According to the Clemson Insider, this is what he said.
“I get beat up for this all the time and I don’t really care,” Swinney said. “We want to listen to the player on everything – like, everything – and I’m all for expanding the playoff. Great. I got no problem with it. But I want to do it in a way that’s healthy for the player. And what bothers me about the expansion of the playoff is when all this was coming about a few years ago, we were kind of given a charge by our commissioner to go and talk to our team and ask them, hey, this is what was coming down the pipe, here’s how it’s going to look like – wanted the feedback. I met with my team and I’ll never forget it, and I kind of laid it out for them, here’s where we are, and they all looked at me like I was crazy, like I had three eyeballs.
“You mean to tell me we got to start in July and we’re going to finish later in January? Oh and we just beat Alabama and now we gotta go play Georgia next week? You know, or you beat Ohio State, Alabama and now you gotta go play Georgia? And these are guys that have pro aspirations, and until you’ve been through a season of 15 games at this level, it’s hard to really have that perspective. So, the interesting thing about the whole dynamic to me, when all that was coming about – I gave the feedback but nobody listens.
“We listen to the player on all these things, but when it comes to – like, they don’t want to start earlier in July. They don’t want to go later in January. Oh, finals? Who cares? It just falls on deaf ears, and so I’m like, we can’t just keep expanding college football. And now where we are, you’re going to have to play 17 games. So, that’s a lot for a college player.”
He never stops complaining. Typical Dabo.