Clemson football: Footloosin’ our minds – Media’s obsession with Dabo continues

You remember how the pastor in Footloose hated dancin’? Apparently, the gutters of the Twitter app have the same opinions.

We’ve come to that point in the summer where we collectively hold our breath on what thing in Clemson football will be misconstrued, taken out of context, and gaslit in to a 5-alarm fire by the media.  Whether it’s by USA Today, The New York Times, The FFRF, PETA, The ACLU or some British talking head who tries to sound witty with a sound bite from a much larger quote, Dabo has reached a point in his career where he can literally say and do anything and, whether he likes it or not, it’s controversial.

Which brings us to this weekend. What horrible thing did Dabo do? Was he misquoted on NIL? Was he a “Karen” about something he didn’t like? Did he mistreat someone in the community or one of his players?

Let’s roll the film.

He….danced?

For any lost context on his outfit and the dance, this weekend was Dabo’s All-In Foundation’s Women’s Clinic.  All the proceeds go to breast cancer research and this year they successfully raised $350,000. It’s a weekend for ladies who want to support the cause and love Clemson football, Dabo, and the players to have fun and let loose. It’s a charity event that tries to bring the energy and make it an exciting environment for the attendees.

That brings us back to the tweet. It’s pretty innocuous- benign, with no real substance other than something that Dabo does. He’s a goofball dad with goofball dad energy at a Womens Clinic. Other than the low hanging fruit of him wearing pink and the dance jokes by our feathered brethren in the Midlands, it should have been nothing that was taken too seriously by anyone outside of the area.

Enter the rocket scientist at Barstool Sports.

Now to be fair, this is a relatively beige tweet in its own right. The real fire begins when resident “Subject Matter Expert” and wannabe Ric Flair, Brandon Walker decided to insert his hardline opinions.

Now, with no context, this doesn’t really move the needle. But then you realize that Barney Rubble….I mean Brandon Walker, doesn’t particularly like Dabo. Below has some NSFW language (also expand the tweets; it gives full context, which in this case, doesn’t help Brandon)

He consistently compares Dabo to Hugh Freeze, often referring to where his program is as “if Hugh Freeze had success”. So now you can see where this Pulitzer Prize winning songbird of our generation is coming from.

I took to twitter to defend something that has no real joke to it and got a response:

After catching the ire of other Clemson fans (not just me), he dug his feet in.

And so on and so forth. He responded to every Clemson fan that seemed to be a little put off by an ill-timed joke about a coach dancing at a charity event for cancer research. Looking through his mentions, he seemed shocked by the notion that Clemson fans would be taken aback by such a thing.

A few weeks ago, I referenced how Clemson fans don’t need to pay Finebaum attention. He’s a literal SEC propagandist that can get a rise out of Clemson fans by just poking the bear. This is different.

Brandon Walker fails to see the irony of someone that works for Barstool calling Clemson football fans part of a cult

It’s one thing to say Clemson fans are paranoid on your television show when things get slow. It’s another to talk tough about something that’s really not that crazy and immediately play the victim like Brandon Walker is doing. It’s rich that someone who works for BARSTOOL SPORTS has the audacity to tell anyone whatsoever that they are in a cult. Have you ever heard of Google?

This just goes in the book of another mainstream talking head with a bone to pick with a coach he knows little about. He thinks he does, and he is set in his ways. I don’t normally get in to Twitter beefs with anyone outside of Columbia, but the joke seemed so ill intentioned and his not backing down only stoked the fire of more and more fans.

Brandon Walker has now found his face on the list of most wanted of Twitter accounts and sports writers that Clemson despises. And hopefully this finds its way to Coach Swinney’s personal bulletin board (all though I doubt it, he probably gets a kick out of it).

Either way, if and when Clemson next has success, I have plenty of bookmarked tweets from above that I will be sitting on. Believe that.

We’re 7 weeks away. Spot the blasted ball.