Dabo Swinney’s Clemson football team has won 27 straight regular season games and two of the last three national championships in 2017 and 2019.But Swinney apparently is still looking for love from the College Football Playoff selection committee.
Swinney went off on a vintage rant Saturday after the 11-0 Tigers, who are ranked third in the current CFP rankings, defeated in state rival South Carolina from the SEC, 38-3, in Columbia.
“Obviously, if we lose this game, they’re going to kick us out. They don’t want us there anyway., We’d drop to 20. Georgia loses to this very same team and it’s, ‘How do we keep Georgia in?’ We win, against a team that beat Georgia and it’s “How do we get Clemson out? It’s the dadgummest thing.’’
Swinney pushed the point again later in his volatile post-game press conference. “We’ve got to go 30-0. We ain’t got no choice because we don’t play nobody.’’
The Tigers has won seven straight this season by at least 31 points going back to a 21-20 close call against North Carolina Sept. 28. Clemson faces Virginia next week for the ACC championship, the Tigers fifth appearance in the conference title game.
Conversely, Clemson is the only team among the Top 10 in the CFP rankings that hasn’t faced a team currently in the committee’s top 25. The new rankings will be released Tuesday night. The Tigers have faced just three Power 5 teams with winning records.
That didn’t stop Swinney from promoting the weaker than usual ACC, claiming it doesn’t get enough credit and the Tigers were being hurt by committee voters because of the UNC game.
“It’s been that way all year long,’’ Swinney said. “Some guy said the other day on the radio, ‘Y’all are pre-North Carolina.’ What season has he watched? It’s like, “You want me to agree with that?’ We’ve dominated 11 of 12 games. Dominated. We’re not any different. There’s no pre-North Carolina. We just had one close game where we stunk. We turned it over, gave up a big play, but we won. There’s nobody more consistent than us.’’
Clemson is the first team since 1996 to hold all 12 of its opponents to under 300 total yards and has scored 38 points in 10 of its 12 games.
Clemson certainly passes the eye test and deserves to be part of the mix for the fourth straight time. But it is hard to buy Swinney’s theory the ACC doesn’t get enough credit. A better argument might be the Tigers are 10-1 against the SEC in their last 11 and won 115 games this decades. So did Alabama and Ohio State. “We played both and won the last time they played. Our program is what people don’t focus on.’’ He said. “Clemson would be 9-3 in any league they played in.
“At the end of the day, it’s not my job to build a good league. It’s my job to build a good program and I think we’ve done a good job of that. This team has gone 12—0 In the history of Clemson football, it’s only happened four teams—1981, 2015, 2018 and 2019. It’s hard to do and only three teams are unbeaten this season. If it’s so easy to finish unbeaten, how come there aren’t more than three.’’
