Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney made headlines when he assigned Ohio State a No. 11 ranking in his ballot for the USA Today Coaches Poll this past Monday. In a clip of an interview with ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi that aired Saturday evening on College Football Scoreboard, Swinney explained the reasoning behind the ranking.
“You’ve been clear on this point throughout, Dabo, about the number of games as a metric has to matter — maybe as much as ever — given how difficult the grind has been this season,” Rinaldi said. “So you ranked Ohio State 11th and it creates a huge reaction. All right, how would you characterize the reaction to that ranking? Why Ohio State 11th?”
“Yeah, overreaction,” Swinney said. “First of all, my vote don’t mean anything. But it means something to me, you know? It’s my poll. I do it. It creates a stir because we just so happen to be playing Ohio State. It has nothing to do with Ohio State — absolutely zero. You can change the name to Michigan or Georgia or Florida or Tennessee or Nebraska. Anytime you have a top-10 (ranking), it should be that special. This year it’s like really, really, really special and I wanted it to be that way. And so, I wanted to recognize the teams that played nine games or more. And so, if you didn’t play nine games, I just didn’t consider you from the top 10. That’s why they were 11.
“Obviously, they’re a great team. They’re plenty good enough and talented enough to beat us and good enough to win the national championship. But in my opinion, I don’t think that it’s right that three teams have to play 13 games to win it all and one team has to play eight. What universe am I living in? And it has nothing to with them. It was about qualifying. And I didn’t think they were qualified, based on the number of games, versus all these other teams. … In my opinion — Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Cincinnati — they got punished for playing more games.”
Clemson won 29-23 over Ohio State in the Dec. 28, 2019, CFB Playoff semifinal matchup. The Tigers previously beat the Buckeyes by a 31-0 shutout Dec. 31, 2016, a first CFB Playoff matchup between both sides. Swinney also owns a 40-35 victory against Ohio State from the Jan. 3, 2014, Orange Bowl.
No. 2 Clemson (10-1) and No. 3 Ohio State (6-0) have a chance to settle the dispute in next Friday’s College Football Playoff semifinal game. The Sugar Bowl is set for an 8 p.m. ET kickoff on ESPN at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
