While much of the college football world is excited about the upcoming College Football Playoff expansion, Dabo Swinney isn’t necessarily one of them.
During a recent interview with Greg McElroy on his Always College Football podcast, Dabo Swinney gave his honest thoughts about playoff expansion, blasting college football’s decision-makers for failing to work in the best interest of the players.
“I get beat up for this all the time and I don’t really care,” Swinney said on the podcast, according to The Clemson Insider. “We want to listen to the player on everything – like, everything – and I’m all for expanding the playoff. Great. I got no problem with it. But I want to do it in a way that’s healthy for the player. And what bothers me about the expansion of the playoff is when all this was coming about a few years ago, we were kind of given a charge by our commissioner to go and talk to our team and ask them, hey, this is what was coming down the pipe, here’s how it’s going to look like – wanted the feedback. I met with my team and I’ll never forget it, and I kind of laid it out for them, here’s where we are, and they all looked at me like I was crazy, like I had three eyeballs.
“You mean to tell me we got to start in July and we’re going to finish later in January? Oh and we just beat Alabama and now we gotta go play Georgia next week? You know, or you beat Ohio State, Alabama and now you gotta go play Georgia? And these are guys that have pro aspirations, and until you’ve been through a season of 15 games at this level, it’s hard to really have that perspective. So, the interesting thing about the whole dynamic to me, when all that was coming about – I gave the feedback but nobody listens.
“We listen to the player on all these things, but when it comes to – like, they don’t want to start earlier in July. They don’t want to go later in January. Oh, finals? Who cares? It just falls on deaf ears, and so I’m like, we can’t just keep expanding college football. And now where we are, you’re going to have to play 17 games. So, that’s a lot for a college player.”
It’s certainly a fair criticism from Dabo. We’ll see if it leads to any changes.
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