Dabo Swinney changes weekly radio show format

CLEMSON — The college football season kicked off on last Saturday and it was a joy for all football fans to see a live football game. There’s a slate of prime time matchups this weekend for Labor Day and Clemson, as always, are one of the marque games.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has a message though for Clemson fans ahead of their big Saturday matchup against number one ranked Georgia at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA. The message is that he will no longer be taking callers during his weekly radio show.

This is decision is probably comes after the infamous ‘Tyler from Spartanburg’ call last season after Clemson got off to a 4-4 start. If you don’t remember, Tyler angrily questioned Swinney being paid $11 million per year by the university and the football program has not lived up to the standards that Swinney created.

“You make $11.5 million a year. That’s second in college football, if I’m not mistaken. I’m curious why that salary has led to a 4-4 [record]? … After that 2018 national title, something changed. And there seems to be a lot of arrogance that came in. There’s a lot of friends and family,” Tyler said. “I mean three of the 10 on-field football coaches are external, experienced hires. Everyone else is an internal hire that had no experience before or was a former player or friend. So I’m curious, why are we paying you $11.5 million to go 4-4? And it’s not just this year. It’s been just the refusal to accept…”

Swinney made it clear that he didn’t appreciate the comments. People tend to forget that the same standards that they are holding Swinney too are the same ones that he has created by winning championships, dominating the conference and being a consistent championship contender.

So he responded, “I’ve listened to enough of you, Tyler. You can have all your opinions all you want. I don’t know how old you are, don’t really care. But let me tell you something, we won 11 games last year. And you’re part of the problem, to be honest with you. Because that is part of the problem. It’s people like you, that all you do… the expectation is greater than the appreciation. And that’s the problem.

“We’ve had 12 10-plus seasons in a row. That’s happened three times in 150 years. So if you wanna know why, Clemson ain’t sniffed a national championship for 35 years. We’ve won two in seven years. And there’s only two other teams that can say that – Georgia and Alabama, OK?

After that rant, Clemson went on to go 5-0 the remainder of the season and finished with a 9-4 record. Swinney did admit to his program having a bad year last season in his response and took full responsibility for it. He also challenged the fan to apply for the job which didn’t go over too well for the Clemson fan base. In addition, Swinney almost gave the some fans their wish as he was in strong consideration for the Alabama head coaching vacancy.

Regardless, Swinney will be back in Clemson this fall for his 17th season and will still continue his weekly radio show with a different format this season. Instead of the call-ins, he will take questions from fans by email or text message. The first show was last week on station 1055TheRoar.

Hopefully, that can ease some of the tension but it probably won’t as fans will be expecting more from Clemson with the College Football Playoffs field expanding from four teams to 12 teams.