Dabo Swinney will likely apologize on Monday (or sooner) for an ill-advised suicide joke that he made following Saturday’s college football loss on the road at Miami in double overtime. It was incredibly insensitive and entirely unnecessary.
The Tigers, who suffered their third loss of the season to move to 4-3, held a 17-7 lead entering the fourth quarter. They allowed Hurricanes backup quarterback Emory Williams to orchestrate two-straight scoring drives in the final eight minutes of the game to tie things up and force overtime.
Clemson got the ball first in the the extra period. It added a field goal.
Miami answered, and then scored a touchdown on the next possession.
Cade Klubnik and the visiting offense could not respond. Mario Cristobal, despite another mind-boggling late game clock decision, escaped with a win.
Following the game, Dabo Swinney was asked about how his athletes will handle the loss. Specifically, the 53-year-old head coach was asked whether his program employs psychiatrists to help the athletes cope with difficult situations in their lives, including the outside noise that comes with overtime road losses and elimination from ACC Championship contention.
Swinney gave the worst-possible answer.
REPORTER: “Some coaches have employed sports psychiatrists, have you ever done that?”
SWINNEY: “Oh, we’ve got ’em, we got ’em. He’s probably, he’s probably on suicide watch right now. Yeah, yeah, we’ve got ’em.”
Uhhhhhhhhh………. WHAT?!
Swinney was either:
- Implying that his athletes are considering suicide after the loss, which will require the psychiatrist to be on high alert.
- Implying that the psychiatrist is considering suicide because of the amount of frustrated athletes to whom he must adhere in the coming week.
More than likely, it was the former. Either way, it was not cool.
Especially considering that Swinney laughed during his delivery with a smug smirk on his face.
Here is how it looked and sounded in real time:
It appeared as though Swinney may have recognized his mistake in real time. He paused for a moment and semi-nervously adjusted his hat before moving on. Still not cool. Expect an apology soon.