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Shannon Sharpe calls out Dabo Swinney after Week 1 blowout loss to Georgia
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Clemson didn’t play like the 14th-ranked team in the country in Saturday afternoon’s 34-3 bludgeoning at the hands of top-ranked Georgia in Atlanta.
It was a really, really bad Week 1 for the Tigers and head coach Dabo Swinney, and ESPN sports analyst Shannon Sharpe didn’t hold back in his criticism of Swinney as the Tigers picked up the pieces from their latest season-opening loss to the Bulldogs.
Maybe it’s just really hard to stay on the college football mountaintop, where Clemson was for a while just a few years ago in winning national championships in 2016 and 2018. Maybe it was that the Tigers had the toughest Week 1 assignment imaginable, facing the top-ranked team in the country in its home state.
Or, maybe, Swinney’s refusal to use the transfer portal to his advantage like other coaches (like his Saturday counterpart, Kirby Smart) already showed itself on the 1st Saturday of the season.
Whatever it is or was Saturday, Sharpe didn’t hold back on Swinney during his ‘Nightcap’ show with Chad Johnson.
https://twitter.com/NightcapShow_/status/1830096420210434212?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1830096420210434212%7Ctwgr%5E95009e7a778735e61617e8f4603088c8618784a4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fawfulannouncing.com%2Fcollege-football%2Fshannon-sharpe-dabo-swinney-clemson-tigers-nightcap.html
“Check this out, he’s gonna have to come to the conclusion, the realization … he’s gonna have to have an epiphany, which is a realization that if you don’t get the transfer portal, you ain’t winning,” Sharpe said, per Awful Announcing. “ … Clemson is one of four teams, Navy, Army, Air Force — they don’t accept transfers at the service academies — that didn’t land a transfer. Hey, Dabo, you said when they started paying players, you were gonna exit stage left.”
And that was only the beginning of Sharpe’s postgame rant against Swinney.
“I remember, hey, you know another guy? Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) said, ‘I don’t do that. One and dones? No, that ain’t me.’ Right? Until he started doing one and dones. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Dabo, get with the program,” Sharpe continued. “You’re not that good. You’re not that good, buddy. You’re not that good. If you think you’re just gonna get high school seniors, and that’s what you gonna win with? Bro, it’s over. It is over. Everybody else is doing it. Look at the top-10 teams.”
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
