Dabo Swinney unleashes, calls for 'complete blowup' of college football

Dabo Swinney isn’t happy with the state of college football. The Clemson head coach made that abundantly clear in an interview with ESPN’s Chris Low on Friday.

Swinney had some poignant comments about the game and where things stand. In the process, he called for a “complete blowup” of the current system as NIL and the transfer portal continue to make impacts on roster construction.

“I think there’s going to be a complete blowup … especially in football, and there needs to be,” Swinney said. “I think eventually there will be some type of break and another division. Right now, you got everybody in one group, and it’s not feasible. Alabama has different problems than Middle Tennessee, but we’re trying to make them all the same and it’s just not. I think you’ll have 40 or 50 teams and a commissioner and here are the rules.”

Later in the article, Swinney doubled down, citing communication issues and the need to update the rulebook. That came about a week after SEC commissioner Greg Sankey expressed a similar sentiment about the need to “delete” some rules.

“There’s so much bureaucracy, and you can’t get anything done in a real-time manner. It’s frustrating,” Swinney said. “The communication is not good, and the rules are outdated. Again, there have been a lot of positives when it comes to the scholarships. But you’ve got all these people voting on things, and it’s just not apples to apples.”

Clemson is among the many schools entering the NIL landscape. The Tigers unveiled an NIL collective on Friday, which is meant to help student athletes maximize NIL opportunities.

Dabo Swinney sounds off on NIL legislation, state of college football

Swinney also spoke with Low about the changing NIL landscape and how college football, talked candidly about the lack of control across the game with NIL legislation lacking across the country.

“There’s no rules, no guidance, no nothing,” Swinney said. “It’s out of control, it’s not sustainable. It’s an absolute mess and a train wreck, and the kids are going to be the ones who suffer in the end. There are going to be a lot of kids that end up with no degrees and make decisions based on the wrong things.”

After allowing students to profit from name, image and likeness deals, the NCAA largely bowed out of the regulation side of things while allowing individual states to determine those finer details. However, although some states quickly implemented strict guidelines, many later repealed the laws and opened things up.