Media bias around Clemson football made clear this weekend

Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney doesn’t always say the right things.

However, Coach Swinney always means well and he speaks from the heart and does his best to represent Clemson football in the right manner. While he has had a few times where he either should have said less, said nothing, or spoken sooner, he has had a pretty good track record since taking over the program.

More importantly, he has never made a major mistake like the one that Alabama head coach Nick Saban made Saturday afternoon.

If you don’t pay attention to college football in general then you probably missed the gruesome injury to Alabama star playmaker Jaylen Waddle Saturday against Tennessee. He was loaded onto a stretcher and taken to the hospital.

Saban declared him out for the rest of the year and then had this to say:

"“It’s really a sad time for me, for Jaylen Waddle and his family,” Saban said. “He’s got a very similar injury to what Kenyan Drake had. It’s a high ankle sprain but also a fracture, so they’ll probably have to do surgery on him. We’re gonna fly him back privately with doctors and take him right to Birmingham and see what we have to do right away. But that’s the case — and we’re pretty certain that it is — that he would probably be out for the year."

There is nothing wrong with his initial comments. It’s on par with what every head coach in college football would say and along the lines of statements that Clemson football has released in the past. Then Nick Saban takes is little too far when he says the following:

"“I hate it that he gets hurt on a play like that. Not supposed to bring a ball out when he’s that deep in the end zone, the guy’s a great player. He’s a great teammate. He’s an exciting player to watch. Hate that people in college football can’t see a great player the rest of this season.”"

Imagine the hatred toward Clemson football had this been Dabo Swinney.

Yes, you read that correctly, the great Nick Saban blamed a player for his own injury. Imagine what would have happened had Coach Swinney blamed Deshaun Watson for tearing his ACL in 2014? Clemson football would have been drug through the mud along with his own reputation.

I am not big into conspiracy theories but when you look at the headlines that surround Clemson football and Dabo Swinney in addition to the non-football questions he receives on a weekly basis and then you look at Saban blaming an injury on an athlete himself gets little to no coverage from the talking heads and their networks, there is clearly a media bias that surrounds Clemson football.