ESPN and Paul Finebaum ride Dabo Swinney’s coattails

Nearly every coach on Dabo Swinney’s staff met with the press yesterday. The coordinators and assistants took the morning and Swinney spoke just after lunchtime.

They talked about injuries (mostly good news). They discussed players taking more of a leadership role. They discussed position battles, incoming freshmen, and at least a dozen other things about the upcoming season.

Did anyone outside of Clemson care about any of this? Apparently not. That’s fine. Clemson is barely in the national discussion right now. No big deal.

They did, however, find one little bit of information that would serve their purpose.

Swinney also mentioned that he thinks we could see more opt-outs during the season when teams fall out of contention by mid-season.

Is Swinney right? I don’t think so. We see teams fall out of contention in sports like basketball and baseball (where the tournament is even more crucial to overall success) but we don’t see players opting out there. Could it happen? Yes, but we don't have any actual evidence that it will happen in a situation without extenuating circumstances, like we saw in 2020 with the pandemic.

That’s not the point of this discussion, however. This was a random comment. It was something we in Clemson Nation saw posted, said ‘mmm-kay’ and then moved on quickly to more important things. It was a nothing burger.

It turns out to ESPN and Paul Finebaum, it was filet mignon because it gave them a chance to be negative about Dabo Swinney.

"No, he's not right. Dabo, that was plain dumb. What happened to you? You used to be a voice of reason in college football, and now you're the get-off-my-lawn guy. Everybody knows what we're doing here. Everybody understands that this is essentially the NFL playoffs. Of course, there's unintended consequences. That is not breaking news, Dabo. Your goal isn't to find problems with this system. Your goal is to get back in the playoff. Some place you haven't been in a while."

- Paul Finebaum

ESPN did a whole segment on Swinney’s comments. It barely earned a post on X for us, but the nationals latched onto it again because they know Dabo Swinney brings views and attention.

At no point did Finebaum even make an argument that Swinney's take wasn't accurate (like I did above). Apparently, Swinney was dumb for answering a the question about unintended consequences with a possible example of unintended consequences.

Mmm-kay. Finebaum was once someone who could skewer someone with the efficiency of Rush Limbaugh and Simon Cowell but has devolved into someone who just calls people dumb.

Thanks for the fake outrage, Pawl. Thank you, ESPN, for proving once again what I said months ago: Dabo Swinney is the national college football press's sugar daddy.