We like Dabo Swinney around here. We like his dancing and his positive attitude and all that. But the news that he’s now making $5.1 million per year demands a look back at something he said a couple years ago:
Dabo Swinney’s new $5 million salary makes this old comment look even worse
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We try to teach our guys, use football to create the opportunities. Take advantage of the platform and the brand and the marketing you have available to you. But 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.Based only on the tampered market that is head coaching salaries in this amateur sport, Dabo’s pay is fair. His teams have accomplished more to this point than those of Charlie Strong, Hugh Freeze, Kevin Sumlin and other coaches in his new neighborhood, nearly winning a national title last season and recording four straight top-15 years.
Buuut based on that thing he said about college athletes making money, it’s not easy to stomach. “Professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me,” said the man who now makes $5 million in college athletics. HBO’s John Oliver and others called him out for it at the time, when Swinney was making a lowly $3.3 million.
He’s also allowed to collect trademark royalties off a team slogan borne from one of his postgame hollerins (which is fine), something none of this players would be able to do with any of their own nicknames or sayings (which is not fine).
We still like Dabo. His players clearly like him. But he probably shouldn’t ever say anything like that ever again.
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