Clemson Football: Notre Dame AD thinks Irish are on the same level

Despite Clemson football dismantling Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl earlier this season, AD Jack Swarbrick thinks the two are equals.

It seems that everybody has lost their mind when it comes to the dominance of Clemson football.

Not only are Alabama and SEC faithful coming out with ridiculous claims about why the Tigers defeated the Tide 44-16 in the National Championship game, now Notre Dame administrators are coming out of the woodwork to somehow dignify a 30-3 loss in the first round of the CFB Playoff.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick told The Athletic that Clemson was an exceptional team, but he didn’t see a major talent gap between the Tigers and the Fighting Irish. He said that he felt like the program had some work to do when it lost to Alabama a few years prior, but that Clemson was just a hot team playing really well at the time.

"“I came off the field against Alabama thinking, ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do here.’  I didn’t feel that way at all in this game,” Swarbrick told The Athletic. “Clemson is an exceptional team. They are very good. And they played that way. But I didn’t see a significant talent differential. I didn’t see a program differential in terms of strength and conditioning, or preparedness. I thought we had units on the field that were the better of the two in some positions, some areas."

Thoughts:

Seriously, what are people thinking? Has the summer heat finally gotten to be too much?

While there’s no doubt that Notre Dame has increased its talent level over the past few years and that the Irish are currently one of the top-10 programs in the nation, it’s a whole different story to compare them to Clemson football.

It’s almost like they are looking to throw backhanded compliments. Since when was a 27-point victory something that happened between teams of comparable talent? Clemson was up 23-3 at halftime. The Tigers didn’t allow a single touchdown from Notre Dame and held the Irish scoreless for the final three quarters of the game.

The talent between the two programs- no offense to the Fighting Irish- is nowhere near the same. Clemson is on another level and the only program in the country with talent even close to the Tigers is Alabama, and we saw what happened when those two teams matched up on the field.