Dabo Swinney wants a Clemson football international game: 'All we ever get to do is go to ... Winston-Salem'
CLEMSON – Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has seen his name on the wall at the Vatican in Rome and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in Birmingham, Alabama.
So why not add Ireland’s Aviva Stadium to the list?
Swinney appeared ready to pack his bags after hearing this week that Florida State and Georgia Tech would be playing their 2024 football game at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.
Swinney said he’d be "all-in" with going global for an overseas showdown.
“Let’s do it,” Swinney said. “Let’s go international, man.”
Swinney also said he’s a bit envious of Clemson basketball coach Brad Brownell and some of the faraway locales where he’s been able to take his team to play in recent years.
“All we ever get to do is go to like Winston-Salem and places like that,” Swinney said. “Brownell and the boys, they get to go to Hawaii, Italy. Hey, spread the love a little bit!”
Brownell’s team has indeed made trips to Hawaii and Italy, as well as Spain, France and the Cayman Islands in recent years.
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Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said he would listen to a proposal for an overseas football game, but there’s “nothing on the radar or has been seriously considered.”
“We would certainly need to protect our home games and not lose one of those,” Neff said.
Notre Dame and Navy will play in Dublin during the 2023 season, and the Florida State-Georgia Tech contest in 2024 will mark the ninth college football game held there since 1988.
Ireland as a destination would be just fine with Swinney: The surname Swinney was first found in Ireland.
“I think I’m Irish, Swedish, I’m a little bit of all that – that’s what Swinney is,” Swinney said.
But the name Dabo? Well, that’s another story.
“When you grow up in Alabama with a name like Dabo, you get some ridicule. It kind of comes with it. I can only imagine my parents sitting around at some point in 1969 – maybe they were on drugs, I don’t know – going ‘Dabo,’ yeah, sounds good. We’ll roll with that," Swinney said, laughing.
Dabo’s given name is actually William Christopher Swinney, but he became Dabo when his brother’s repeated attempts at referring to him as “that boy” came out sounding like “da bo.”
Dabo stuck.
“You grow up with that and lo and behold I go to the Shrine Bowl and a guy tells me my name is a word and means ‘I will give’ in Latin,” Swinney said.
On a family trip to Italy in 2019, Swinney confirmed the claim by finding his name on the wall in the Vatican.
“They’ve got all those Latin sentences and there I am – Dabo,” Swinney said. “And all them guys who made fun of me my whole life … I don’t see Bill or Bob or John, I don’t see any of them. I don’t see Jeff up in the Vatican. I’m in the Vatican, so let’s go to Rome and we’ll do a field trip to the Vatican.”
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Dabo Swinney: Clemson football coach on possible overseas game
