Dabo Swinney didn’t hold back Tuesday, taking aim at the growing mess around NFL players trying to return to college football while Clemson gets ready to open the season at LSU.
“Rarely am I at a loss for words,” Swinney said. “But I'm at kind of a loss of words.
I would just say it's kind of embarrassing. I mean, honestly, it's just embarrassing that that's where we are.
I don't blame the kids and people trying to take advantage of the system. I just think it's embarrassing where we are with college football.”
The issue is right in Clemson’s path for Week 1. The Tigers are a 10-point underdog for their road game against No.
11 LSU, and it remains unclear who LSU will actually have available for the showdown in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A Thursday court hearing in Louisiana could determine whether multiple players who spent time with NFL teams during the preseason are allowed to suit up.
LSU’s most notable targets are first-year coach Lane Kiffin’s former Ole Miss standouts Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris. Wright worked with the Browns in the preseason, while Harris spent time with the Saints. Swinney said staffs usually devote part of their Week 1 prep to studying opponents’ transfers from their previous schools, but this situation has turned that routine into something else entirely.
“Been spending this last week or so studying the Browns, the Cowboys, the Saints and the Bucs trying to get ready,” Swinney said. “I actually got to go watch practice in early June for the Browns.
So I'm probably going to get turned in for tampering, I don't know. I wish I'd have known.
I'd have paid a little more attention. Yeah, it's crazy.
It's hard.”
The legal backdrop is part of what has turned LSU’s roster picture into such a strange story. Like the SEC, the ACC has passed a rule preventing former NFL players from returning to its league, but LSU’s challenge of the SEC rule has kept the possibility alive for Wright and Harris.
LSU is also “eyeing” former Utah cornerback Blake Cotton, according to Geaux247. Cotton was briefly with the Broncos during NFL preseason camp.
And there was another twist Monday when defensive end Jack Pyburn, another potential NFL-to-LSU addition, was claimed off waivers by the Chiefs after being cut by the Bucs. That development complicated his hopes of a possible return to LSU after he starred for the Tigers last season.
For Swinney, the whole thing has added another layer of uncertainty to a Week 1 game that already has plenty of attention.
“That outside stuff, we just kind of - no pun intended - we just stay in our lane here at Clemson. Try to.
Every now and then, someone will ram into us. But we just try and handle our business here.
But it's embarrassing; it really is. We have no rules.
There's no governance. It's a joke.
There's zero rules. When you enforce rules, someone just goes and finds a judge to say, 'no, you can't enforce that rule.'
Never did I think I'd be living in an era like this.
“But that's where we are.”
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For Clemson, the immediate football task is still the same, but the backdrop has clearly shifted as the conference sorts through a disagreement that could affect the Tigers' opener. The SEC has already discussed drastic responses, including boycotting games against LSU or even expelling the program, making this one of the more unusual preseason storylines attached to a game that was supposed to be defined by what happens on the field. [Read more 🡒]
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LSU also enters this one looking different under new head coach Lane Kiffin, who has reshaped the roster with a heavy transfer influx and added quarterback Sam Leavitt among the key newcomers. For Clemson, the trip is about more than a road game. It is another chance to answer an old debate on familiar ground, where the Death Valley label has been a point of pride for both programs and the winner gets a little more bragging rights to carry away. [Read more 🡒]