Dabo Swinney fires back at Greg Sankey over ACC protecting top teams comment

Sankey, who is usually reserved and has been a great leader during COVID-19, spoke his mind about the Big Ten, Pac-12 and the ACC with respect to the College Football Playoff.

The SEC set out to play a 10-game conference-only schedule before the season, and the league is currently on pace to play 69 of those 70 total games. That’s remarkable, and the league never wavered from that schedule.

While politicking for his conference on GameDay, Sankey made sure to point out that the SEC never considered canceling games for top Playoff contenders and division winners Alabama or Florida like the ACC did for Clemson and Notre Dame.

The Tide and Gators both played games as scheduled Saturday. Florida, of course, ended up losing in heartbreaking fashion to LSU.

During the same GameDay segment, Sankey then sent a message to the Playoff selection committee.

“Playing games matters,” he said. “The Playoff selection committee has said that. We have a chance to demonstrated the excellent football in the Southeastern Conference today. I really didn’t have any pushback from our teams. They’re ready to play and have these opportunities. I think playing games matters. Candidly, you take the Texas A&M-Florida game. We added that to our schedule when we went from 8 conference games to 10. You take that game away and Florida is undefeated and Texas A&M only has the loss at Alabama and it’s a different world. So the question is — are we going to be rewarded for playing games or rewarded for not playing games?”

Well, Sankey’s comments didn’t sit well with Dabo Swinney, as he fired back at the SEC commissioner Sunday night during his teleconference.

“If the ACC was trying to really protect Clemson and Notre Dame, why would we even play a game this week?” Swinney said, via ESPN.com. “I mean, if six wins can get you in the playoff, shouldn’t nine get you there? Shouldn’t 10 get you there?

“I would’ve loved to play this past weekend,” Swinney continued. “I had no problem with that. I didn’t make the decision. We wanted to play when we were down in Tallahassee and were about to get on a bus and go play. Things happen.

“We want to crown a worthy champion,” Swinney said. “It’s going to be an awesome game. We’ve played 10 games, Notre Dame has played 10 games, and we’re excited to play for a championship, crown a worthy champion for this league and go from there. We want to go play the game.”