Dabo Swinney & Brian Kelly take pointed shots at the Rose Bowl

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney and Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly met with the media virtually one last time Friday before getting ready to load up and head to Charlotte for the upcoming ACC Championship game.

Both Clemson and Notre Dame are firmly entrenched in the CFB Playoff conversation and there’s solid potential that the two teams could make the field despite what happens in Charlotte on Saturday night, especially if the Tigers win.

Brian Kelly told the media that Notre Dame had tested six times over the course of the week and that both the Tigers and the Irish had zero positives this week. Of course, there’s still one round to go, but Kelly said the game is most definitely ‘on.’

Interestingly enough, though, Kelly made headlines when he was asked about the prospect of playing a CFB Playoff game with no fans.

"“Maybe they [CFP] need to spend a little less time on who the top four teams are and figure out how to get parents into these games because it is an absolute shame and a sham if parents can’t be watching their kids play,” Kelly said via ESPN. “My kids have been on campus since June. They haven’t seen their families very much at all. They’ve had to fight through COVID, some of them have had COVID. They can’t be around their families for Christmas, and you’re going to tell me we’re going to have a playoff and maybe one site can have families and the other can’t? Please.”"

Kelly then went on to say that there are other options for the games to have minimal attendance and that’s what the committee should be focused on accomplishing.

"“Why can’t it be the Rose Bowl in Las Vegas or can it be the Rose Bowl in another town?” Kelly said. “Where’s the flexibility for the student-athlete is all I’m saying. The one thing these kids have been is incredibly flexible, and then on the other side we can’t be flexible? It’s hard to imagine.”"

The Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA) and Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA) are currently set to be the site of the CFB Playoff semifinals. For reference, the Saints- who play in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome where the Sugar Bowl is hosted- have been allowed to have as many as 6,000 fans in the stands and are approved for 3,000 this weekend against the Kansas City Chiefs. Out in California, however, fan attendance has been held at ‘zero.’

In addition to Kelly’s pointed words on playing the game out in California with no fans, Dabo Swinney also had some words when asked about it

"“It makes no sense to me to put a bunch of kids on a plane and fly them across the country to California to play in an empty stadium,” Swinney said via ESPN. “It should be the same for all four teams with fans, parents, etc. This is a year everybody’s made adjustments and it seems likee this would be a pretty easy one to make.”"

Dabo Swinney and Brian Kelly are absolutely right.

In a year where colleges have been hit hard financially, what sense does it make to fly teams across the country- we all know none of the four teams selected are going to be from the west coast- and play in an empty stadium where not even their families can be in attendance?

It just has to do with common sense. Moving the game to another state (even just across to Nevada or Arizona, for example) where a limited number of fans (especially those families) can be in attendance seems like an easy move and something the CFB Playoff committee should’ve done a long time ago.

The Rose Bowl stands to lose more money by staying in its traditional stadium, so what would it have to lose by moving a couple of states over or even down to a state like Florida for one season, as it has done in the past?

And if you can’t have limited numbers of fans in the stands (ie 1,000 in a stadium that has the capacity to hold 70,000), then you should at least cater to the schools where they don’t have to spend enormous amounts of money travelling across the country to play a game that could’ve easily have been played for half the cost. That’s the point Dabo Swinney is making.

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