Dabo Swinney’s feud with the Ohio State Buckeyes has gotten more intense over the past couple of weeks.

The Clemson coach ranked the Buckeyes No. 11 in his final Coaches Poll, causing quite a stir ahead of those teams meeting up in Friday’s Sugar Bowl with a spot in the College Football Playoff title game on the line.

This weekend, though, Swinney sat down with ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and explained why he had the Buckeyes ranked where he did:

“It means something to me. It’s my poll. I do it. … It has nothing to do with Ohio State — absolutely zero,” Swinney said. “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 9 games or more. And so, if you didn’t play 9 games, I just didn’t consider you for 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 3 teams have to play 13 games to win it all and 1 team has to play 8. What universe am I living in? And it has nothing to do with them. It was about qualifying. And I didn’t think they were qualified based on the number of games.”

All of this is probably going straight to Ohio State’s bulletin board. Will it be enough to get the Buckeyes over the edge against Clemson for the first time in their Playoff history?

We’ll find out soon enough, as the game is scheduled for Friday in New Orleans.