Dabo Swinney thinks CFP wants Clemson out

Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney ranted to the media this weekend about the perceived double-standard surrounding the Tigers in the CFB Playoff.

The Clemson Tigers, led by Dabo Swinney, are one of the few college football programs this year to remain undefeated. Saturday, the Tigers defeated their in-state rival South Carolina Gamecocks 38-3 in a contest that could just as well have been 55-3.

After the game at his media conference, head coach Dabo Swinney was not a happy man. Not that he wasn’t satisfied with his team’s effort against the Gamecocks. He was. But his disdain was geared more for what the College Football Playoff (CFP) folks have in mind for his program.

It is Swinney’s opinion, that the CFP believes that because Clemson resides in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), that his program somehow has leprosy and therefore should be shunned to some remote island instead of an invitation to the four-team playoff format.

"“Obviously, if we lose this game, they are going to kick us out. They don’t want us there anyway,” Swinney said through various questions from reporters after the game. “We’d drop to 20 [had Clemson lost to South Carolina]. Georgia loses to this very same team, and it’s, ‘How do we keep Georgia in? We win, against the team that beat [Georgia], and it’s, ‘How do we get Clemson out?’ It’s the dadgummest thing.'”"

Swinney is in the mindset that because Clemson does not play a schedule full of powerhouse teams, such as the Southeastern Conference (SEC) as well as the Big 10 teams do, that his program is somehow considered “a sugar team” that relies on its winning ways at the behest of the downtrodden.

The Tigers’ coach then added:

"“We’ve got to go 30-0. We ain’t got no choice because we don’t play nobody.”"

Which is both true and not his fault. If you gaze at the Tigers 2019 schedule, there are very few teams that have mustered a winning year.

When Clemson went up against the Texas A&M Aggies early in the season, the Aggies were ranked 12th in the nation. Now, they are 7-4-0. Florida State is 6-5-0, Louisville 7-5-0 while Boston College is even with a 6-6-0 record. Everyone else has a losing record. The end result is that the Tigers are a sterling 12-0-0, and yet only played three teams with a winning record.

Whose fault it that you ask? Not Swinney’s. It is his job, and his responsibility, to make the Clemson program into a winner. And he has done exactly that.

What is not his job is to make the remainder of the ACC into winners. All of those programs have coaches whose job it is to produce winning-caliber programs year-in and year-out. And they have not.

Fellow ACC chums Virginia did finish with a respectable 9-3-0 record as well as Virginia Tech (8-4-0). But those two teams play in the Coastal Division while Clemson resides in the Atlantic Division. The only time those clubs meet is in the ACC Championship Game. Virginia and Clemson meet in the conference championship game on December 7 at Bank of American Stadium in Charlotte, NC.  The game marks the fifth straight appearance for the Tigers in this contest.

This year, Clemson has won seven games by at least a 31-point margin. Last year they killed Alabama in the National Championship Game and have captured two of the last three National Championships and basically dominated every tough opponent in the playoff rounds.

Somehow, according to Dabo Swinney in the post-game presser, that is not enough.

"“It’s been that way all year long Some guy said the other day on the radio, ‘Y’all are pre-North Carolina.’ What season has [he] watched? It’s like, ‘You want me to agree with that?’ We’ve dominated 11 out of 12 games. Dominated. We’re not any different. There’s no pre-North Carolina. We just had one close game where we stunk. We turned it over, gave up a big play, but we won. There’s nobody that’s been more consistent than us.”"

Clemson is 10-1 against SEC teams over the span of a few years.

That in itself is pretty dadgum impressive.