Dabo Swinney gave Ohio State some bulletin board material heading into the College Football Playoff seminal at the Sugar Bowl.

During the final Coaches Poll, Swinney made headlines by ranking Ohio State No. 11, the team Clemson would line up against in the semifinal.

Swinney defended that ranking leading into the game, too.

“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.”

That obviously backfired for Swinney, as Ohio State hammered Clemson 49-28 to punch its ticket to the national title game.

So, naturally, everyone started talking about Swinney’s ranking of Ohio State during the Buckeyes dominance, and following the game, Swinney was asked if he regretted having Ohio State at No. 11.

“No, I don’t regret any of that,” Swinney said. “And polls have nothing to do with motivation. Both teams were highly motivated to play. And, listen, they’re a great team. As I said, that had nothing to do with Ohio State. I said they were good enough to beat us, good enough to win the whole dang thing. But I didn’t think anybody that didn’t play at least nine games, in my poll, that I wasn’t going to put them in the top ten. So I wasn’t going to change that just because there was a chance we could play them. So I don’t have any regret about that. Only thing I regret is obviously not doing a good enough job getting my team ready. But I don’t regret anything about that at all.”

Alabama will take on Ohio State in the national title on January 11 from Miami, Florida.