Clemson’s Dabo Swinney reacts to latest round of college football realignment

Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney understands there’s a lot of “narratives” surrounding his school’s standing in the ACC and college sports at large.

His message to fans: Relax.

“Obviously a lot of conversation about our league and TV contracts and things like that,” Swinney said Friday ahead of Clemson’s first 2023 fall camp practice. “And listen, those things are important. That’s what administrators do. … People are always evaluating the landscape. Things change. Just wait ’til next week – something’s going to be different, right?”

“But at the end of the day, we spend a lot of time focusing on what we don’t have. But I focus on what we do. We’ve got 85 scholarships. As long as we get those 85 scholarships, we’re going to be awesome here at Clemson.”

That was the gist of an eight-minute answer Swinney gave in reaction to the latest round of college football realignment, which has seen Colorado and Arizona reportedly leaving the Pac 12 for the Big 12, Oregon and Washington reportedly leaving the Pac 12 for the Big Ten and Florida State quite blatantly announcing its public intentions to leave the ACC if a growing revenue gap doesn’t change.

Pac 12 schools Utah and Arizona State are also applying for membership in the Big 12, per a Friday report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Clemson hasn’t been as explicitly tied to realignment as it was last summer, when multiple national outlets reported the Tigers were a legitimate expansion target for the SEC and the Big Ten. But the Tigers have been wrapped up this time around, too, thanks mostly to the Seminoles.

Brandon Marcello of 247Sports, citing sources, reported Thursday that “Clemson continues to work silently in the background exploring options as the Tigers remain frustrated by the ACC’s equal revenue-sharing structure” adopted in May.

ESPN has projected that ACC schools could fall anywhere from $30 million to $40 million behind SEC and Big Ten schools in annual revenue distribution in coming years thanks to those conferences’ advantageous TV contracts. That could affect everything from recruiting budgets to assistant coach salary pools and widen an already prominent gap between college football’s haves and have-nots.

Marcello of 247Sports also reported that Clemson and Florida State – the two biggest proponents of that new ACC revenue model, though FSU’s been publicly louder – have “explored” going independent in football like Notre Dame and continue to research “whether they could break the conference’s grant of rights,” which ties ACC schools’ television revenues to the conference through 2036.

But recent reports from TigerIllustrated.com and TigerNet also indicated it’s “very unlikely” Clemson makes a move by the Aug. 15, 2023, deadline for a school such as Clemson or FSU to inform the ACC of its departure from the conference (if it wants to play in a new conference for the 2024 season). If an exit plan does form, August 2024 would be a more realistic deadline, per those reports.

Clemson will not comment on any realignment reports, an athletics department spokesman told The State on Friday.

Swinney, who has guided the Tigers to two national championships and six College Football Playoff appearances, said he trust Clemson athletic director Graham Neff and president James Clements to do what’s best for the school while he focuses on his job: coaching football.

The Tigers are coming off an 11-3 season and their seventh ACC championship in eight years and open the season at Duke on Labor Day.

“I don’t get caught up in all that stuff,” Swinney said. “I mean, honestly, it’s just the next domino to where it’s all going. It just is what it is. I don’t know if it’s going to be this year or midseason or next year or three years from now. But eventually … it’ll be 40, 50, 54 teams, something like that (in a larger conference). And it’s going to be a 140 or 16-team playoff type of deal.”

“That’s where it’s going to be. And it’s going to be whatever you want to call it. I don’t know what the league’s going to be called or what the divisions or whatever. But that’s where it’s gonna go eventually. So there just seems to be these steps going there.”

Dabo Swinney reacts to realignment

Here are few more highlights from Swinney’s realignment comments.

• “From my perspective, my job is to take what we got and go beat what they’ve got. And honestly, in my 15 years, there’s always been a gap. We’ve never had the top TV contract. Ever. I think from an athletic budget standpoint, I think in my time here at Clemson, I think we were No. 17 this year. We’ve been somewhere from No. 17 to No. 40, depending on the year. I think that’s where we’ve been. You guys that follow us, y’all know we’ve never had a No. 1 recruiting class. We usually are somewhere around 8 to 14 or so. That’s usually where we always are. So again, not to minimize those things, the conversation of those things, but man, I don’t control any of that. And it’s a complete waste of my time to worry about that. My focus is on Clemson, and it’s always been that way. And again, what do we have? It’s been that way from Day 1.

• “And those things are important, but they’re not the end all-be all. There’s always been a gap here at Clemson. There’s never been a year that I’ve been here that there hasn’t been this gap. And so the other thing we have at Clemson is we have IPTAY – the greatest athletic fundraising organization in the country. We have incredibly passionate fans. We have a brand that is second to none. We may not have the big market. But just check the TV ratings when the Tigers play over the last decade. You’re going to see four or five of the most viewed games in college football are going to be Clemson. But all these years, when we played LSU in 2012, guess what? We didn’t have the same TV contract. We definitely didn’t have the same athletic budget. We didn’t have the same amount of five-stars or four-stars.”

• “But you’ve still gotta play the game, right? If it was just those things then it would be easy to declare a winner every single year. You still have to play the game. It’s still people. It’s still culture. It’s still getting a group of people with the singleness of purpose, one heartbeat, that love each other, love where they are and love what they do. It still comes down to those things. None of that stuff changes.”

• “So I have no idea what the future holds. I have no idea. But I do know that man, Clemson is a special place. It’s going to always be a special place. Whatever administrators decide, my job is to go put a football team together and go win. We’re 3-1 against Ohio State. We will never have an equal alumni base to Ohio State, you know? I mean one of the greatest programs in the country. We certainly don’t have the same budget or whatever. But we’ve been able to compete and we always have. So again, that doesn’t minimize the importance of what’s going on in the league and what’s going on in the landscape of college football.

• “I know there’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of narratives. There’s a lot of things that are out there. And I appreciate your question, but I don’t control any of that, alright? What I control is going out there at practice today and frickin’ getting ready to try and win the opener. And getting 85 scholarship guys and a group of 135 total in one heartbeat with a singleness of purpose, completely committed day in and day out to being and doing our best. That’s what I focus on. And whatever we have, loading it up and go see if we can beat whoever we play and what they’ve got.”

• “We’ve won two national championships against one of the greatest organizations in the history of college football (Alabama). And in neither one of those games did we have the same amount of five-stars or four-stars. And in neither one of those games did we have the same TV contract. Neither one of those games did we have the same athletic budget, alright? So again, I know there’s a business side of it. And I understand the longevity and the longterm. But that’s what the administrators do.”

• “So I’m not going to come in here every week and answer questions about it. Lord, we just need to have a good practice today. That’s the best way I can answer your question. So just focus on what we can control. And these guys, man, gotta go play the game. We’ve got 85 scholarships. And as long as we’ve got that, there’s going to be a bunch of great football players that come play for the Tigers. And we’ll see what happens.”