It’s about time Dabo Swinney’s mouth got him in trouble.
The Clemson coach always had the gift for gab. How he walked on at Alabama and found his way onto the coaching staff there and eventually at Clemson, where as the wide receivers’ coach was not respected by all of his peers.
A couple of his former co-assistants at Clemson wound up at UNC, and in the early years of Dabo’s head-coaching stint in Death Valley they claimed he couldn’t put the correct X’s and O’s down on paper to draw up a play. That might have been an exaggeration, but it meant that he could talk an even better game.
Then, after a few shaky seasons, he got the commitment from IPTAY and others at Clemson, where he was able to hire and pay the best staff. His D-coordinator Brent Venables makes more than a million dollars and coaches the 4- and 5-star players Dabo can recruit with a winning tradition, great facilities and that gift for gab.
Now, with five straight trips to the college football final four, Swinney can say anything he wants, and he usually does at his colorful press conferences. Sometimes you wonder whether he thinks about everything before he says it, kind of like the President.
This time, he sure didn’t do that. Yes, he had been wearing the Football Matters t-shirt for a couple of years but obviously didn’t consider the latest ramifications if he put it on like any other day. Some former players have piled on with alleged racial comments they heard in the locker room.
Swinney is very religious and often says, “God loves us all.” He said he has no doubt college football will be played this season, because it is God’s plan. But even he can’t talk his way out of putting on that shirt, when he must have read the blowback from people who know “Black Lives Matter” is the topic in a highly charged and focused time.
Yes, football does matter. Everything we all do that is important to us matters. But with a country on fire over racial injustice, all other matters of slogan come next and take on a different meaning.
Featured image via Associated Press
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