CLEMSON, S.C. _ Dabo Swinney has had better days. But, as is his way, he slaps a smile onto his suntanned face, welcoming two visitors into his palatial corner office and offering them water on a hot summer day.
"Ya'll come on in," he says.
This mid-August morning got off to an auspicious start when a public relations official came across a headline he felt obligated to share with Swinney, coach of Clemson's two-time national championship football team. An essay had been posted the night before on the website for New York Magazine.
The title: "Dabo Swinney Is College Football's Real Evil Villain."
"It's crazy," Swinney says.
When feeling attacked, Swinney just keeps going. Between the Tigers' morning scrimmage and an afternoon staff meeting, he takes swigs from a cold Diet Coke for a midday caffeine grab while pondering his life on top of a sport whose bottom he knows just as well.
What in the world did the football coach at Clemson _ a public university founded in a town of 17,000 people with a sprawling campus that rises out of nowhere from South Carolina's western farmland _ do to warrant a scathing attack in a space normally reserved for writing on culture and style in America's biggest city? Recently, Swinney, pronounced as Sweeney, was asked whether former starting quarterback Kelly Bryant, who left the Tigers four games into last season after losing his job to freshman Trevor Lawrence, had been given a ring honoring Clemson's 2018 national championship run? Swinney said no, because Bryant wasn't on the team.
"I mean, that's like a weeklong story," Swinney says.
Swinney's boyish exuberance used to work to his benefit. Ten years ago, it would have been described as charming. But in this new era of college football, when player rights are being questioned by observers interested only in who's winning and losing on the financial balance sheet, Swinney has become an easy target, an obvious representation of the sport's long-entrenched good-ol'-boy network.
He hasn't gone around looking for trouble, but he has been willing to speak his mind when asked about paying players, something he is beginning to regret. In 2014, answering a question about players forming a union to negotiate for themselves, he said, "As far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that's where you lose me. I'll go do something else, because there's enough entitlement in this world as it is." When Swinney and Clemson agreed to a 10-year, $93-million extension in April, the fattest total contract of any university employee in the country, those five-year-old comments resurfaced, with Swinney labeled as entitled.
"Everybody says, 'Well, OK, you make all this money,'" Swinney says. "Well, OK, I don't set a market."
At Clemson, Swinney has been the right coach at the right time, turning the Tigers from lovable losers _ "Clemsoning" used to be a verb used for choking a big game away _ into the foil of Nick Saban's Alabama dynasty. But nationally, with a groundswell of political momentum growing out of the California Legislature for college athletes to be able to profit from their name, image and likeness, Swinney comes off like an anachronism.
That he can be portrayed as a coach who doesn't look out for his players' best interests has come as a shock to Swinney, who got his nickname of Dabo because his older brother, Tripp, called him "dat boy" as a toddler. Like many of his players, Swinney's upbringing came with few built-in advantages; he walked onto the Alabama football team and emerged as his family's first college graduate. He naturally assumed an underdog role his whole life. The challenge is keeping that fire ablaze now that he's made it.
"My life changed through education," Swinney says. "I saw a lot of great football players that the crowd roared for and this and that, and then all of a sudden I saw them at 30. And they didn't have their education. And life is tough. And I've never wanted that for my players. I want young people who value that experience, who value education."
Everyone has their own definition of what is amateur and what is pro, the NCAA included. When Swinney says pro, he means players being paid a salary.
The California Senate Bill 206, signed into law Monday, would not put players on salary, but it would allow them to be compensated for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) through endorsement deals with third parties. South Carolina state legislators are planning to put forth a similar bill in January, but Swinney says he has not thought about NIL payments for his players.
"No, because I don't have any control over anything," Swinney says.
That's true. He does not make the laws of the land or the NCAA rules. But he does hold this office in the heart of college football's establishment, surrounded daily by a $55-million practice facility that features a giant playground-style slide to get from the second floor to the first, bowling lanes and miniature golf holes, all in the name of maximizing that special student-athlete experience.
Swinney has his opinion about what college sports should be, some parts better researched than others, none of it villainous. He talks fast and free, seemingly without preparation. He'd prefer it if someone would actually stick around and hear him work through his thoughts, giving them proper context.
He's tired of being the subject of "clickbait," as he puts it. He's ready to make his case, all while struggling to accept his place in college sports' progressive new climate.
Swinney turns and flashes a quizzical look.
"You came all the way out here to ask me about paying athletes?" he asks.
