ESPN’s David Hale makes bold tattoo bet that Clemson won’t run the table from here
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Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney faced some tough questions last week after the Tigers’ 51–10 shellacking at the hands of LSU.
Swinney’s roster got absolutely run over by Lane Kiffin’s Tigers, and the matchup showed just how vast the gap was between LSU, which uses the transfer portal to its extremes, and Clemson, where Swinney has long lamented the state of college football’s new era.
When Swinney was asked by reporter Chapel Fowler if he had any regrets about how he constructed his roster over the offseason, Swinney smiled, but was clearly not pleased with the question.
“Chapel, you come with all these questions. I tell you, you’re the gotcha guy. No, I don’t. I don’t, man,” said Swinney. “I regret being 0-1 right now. I regret that.
“Can you ask me that at the end of the season? You know, the season ain’t over. I mean, we got one game, got 11 more. What if we go 11-1? You promised me you asked me that then? Okay, good. I’ll answer it.”
Swinney caught plenty of flak for his response, and on Friday, ESPN’s David Hale added to the shots fired.
Hale first praised Fowler as a great reporter and defended his question, which was definitely fair to ask. He then joked about Swinney’s poor attempt at deflection, as anyone who saw Saturday’s game walked away pretty confident Clemson wouldn’t be winning out from here.
“I will tell you this. I was at that game. I watched Clemson play. And if they finish 11–1, I will get ‘Dabo was right’ tattooed on my butt. Because there is no chance it’s happening.”
ICYMI: @aadelsonESPN & I had some thoughts on Dabo’s dismissiveness of Clemson’s issues and dug into how things have gotten this bad.
Whole show in pod form here: https://t.co/chSu5IeZJipic.twitter.com/ZbdwHZiwO6
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Hale went on to break down how Clemson has fallen from the ranks of college football’s elite in recent years under Swinney, noting that it was fair to ask what has changed for the program while other schools thrive.
“One of the things that really bothers me about the framing of this is, if you go back to the great era of Clemson, 2015–2020, you didn’t have to ‘do things right’ to play with good teams. Clemson was the good team! Clemson was the team that everyone had to do everything right against. And now Dabo acts as if, ‘Well, you know, we just did a few things wrong against a great team, you can’t do’—No! You’re supposed to be the great team.”
Clemson’s quest for an 11–1 campaign and a tattoo on Hale begins with Saturday’s matchup against Georgia Southern.
The post ESPN’s David Hale makes bold tattoo bet that Clemson won’t run the table from here appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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