If Dabo Swinney had his way, Clemson would play against another football school before the regular season.
Unlike some other programs, Clemson will hold a spring game this year. However, the Tigers chose not to televise next Saturday’s showcase at Memorial Stadium.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Swinney explained that a spring game offers an important chance for live competition that his new players can’t receive elsewhere.
“If we had two preseason games, you all think we can get 50,000+ people to show up and see the Tigers play a preseason game in August? I guarantee you we could,” Swinney said. “And that’d be great, but we don’t get that, so this is the only opportunity.”
Colorado and Syracuse attempted to hold joint practices and a scrimmage, but the NCAA denied their waiver request to allow the scrimmage. While the concept gained steam after Deion Sanders publicly championed the idea, Swinney said he’s made the same suggestion every spring for over a decade.
“From Pee Wee League, to middle school, to high school, we are the only level of football — to the NFL — that we don’t get to practice against anybody,” Swinney said. ‘We can’t scrimmage anybody. I’ve never understood that.”
Swinney noted a peril of watching an intra-squad scrimmage from a coach’s perspective.
“Any time somebody grabs an ankle, all 22 of them on the field are your guys, right? It’d be nice to only be 50 percent invested,” he said. “You know, it just is what it is.”
Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images
Per ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, the FBS oversight committee cited short notice when rejecting Colorado and Syracuse’s proposal. The committee felt the scrimmage could give the schools a recruiting advantage and interfere with the athletes’ academic schedules.
However, the committee said it will discuss “a concept that could permit joint spring practices in future seasons” when convening on April 10.
More coaches are joining the campaign to resemble an NFL preseason with scrimmages or exhibitions against other teams. Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy suggested scrimmaging Oklahoma in the spring.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Gundy said of scrimmaging other teams earlier this week. “We get tired of practicing against one other.”
Related: NCAA Rejects Deion Sanders, Colorado’s Spring Game Request
