One of college football’s biggest voices is calling into question whether Swinney is the correct messenger to ensure that accountability continues in the wake of Clemson’s allegations of tampering with a former transfer signee.
ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum said Swinney’s public comments alleging that Ole Miss is tampering threaten to portray the Clemson coach as “out of touch,” and the realities of modern college football have outstripped the enforcement tools that Swinney calls for.
“What it actually does is it emboldens Ole Miss people,” Finebaum said Monday during an appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning. “They’re making a big thing of, ‘OK, our dude’s working hard. Our guy is doing whatever it takes, whether it is, in theory, legal or not.’ And that’s sort of where we are at in college athletics.”
Finebaum cast Swinney’s comments as ill-timed, as he came on the heels of a disappointing season and after years away from Clemson’s last national championship appearance.
“It doesn’t help a guy that ended a very miserable season recently,” Finebaum said. “He’s several years away from a legit national championship contender. Being in the playoffs last year was something outlier, not reality.”
Finebaum recognized Swinney’s historic impact on Clemson’s ascendance but felt the coach’s tone and approach no longer carried across today’s environment.
“That’s a bad way to look for a guy who has such kind of a fanbase support behind him,” Finebaum said. “He’s been among the most distinguished coaches in the history of changing the course of a program, but he just keeps looking up and looking down and looking back and saying that he will get Clemson to that moment.”
Finebaum pointed out that Swinney was not a great delivery, while ESPN analyst Greg McElroy offered a more conflicted assessment, saying Swinney may sound reticent to some but sounds like he is highlighting a legitimate issue.
“I’ve heard a lot of people feel that way — Dabo’s an old man screaming at the clouds,” McElroy said. “But for the most part, he’s calling out something that is wrong.”
The problem is less Swinney’s message and more lack of consequences in the current system, McElroy said.
“There really isn’t anyone that can police it,” McElroy said. “There is nothing you are scared of. This is pretty aggressive — no, not Jeremy Pruitt-style stupidity aggressive — but the same aggressiveness.”
Finebaum said, in turn, that there is no mechanism of this kind enforced by some sort of enforcement that might actually work to contain those behaviors, at least if coaches have no fear that they will be reprimanded for them or otherwise.
“Dabo would say things that are sound but that don’t really matter anymore, like, ‘We’re going to turn you in,’” Finebaum said. “Well, that was the golden phrase before. It just doesn’t work much anymore.”
Finebaum added that Swinney had perhaps done himself some favors by inviting administrators to take charge of things and not being the only public figure in the dispute.
“He should just let the administrators take care of it,” Finebaum said. “Instead of him doing it.”
Officials at Clemson said the university’s approach was that they had reported the issue to the NCAA and would fully cooperate with any review. Swinney has insisted that his remarks were not about one player or one school, but about a more systemic failure in governing tampering and the transfer portal.