Dabo Swinney criticizes lack of accountability for college football referees

Dabo Swinney has certainly had his fair share run-ins with referees over the years. That includes in last Saturday’s 17-14 home loss to rival South Carolina.

“It is what it is. … But it was disappointing, there were a couple of huge plays,” the longtime Clemson head coach said Tuesday. “Again, I’ve never been a part of a completion and then they blow the whistle, and we go back to another play. … I’ve had a few of those this year that have been kind of, ‘Ok, done this a long time, that’s a first.’”

Coming out of that loss, and ahead of the 17th-ranked Tigers’ (9-3) upcoming appearance in Saturday’s ACC Championship Game against No. 8 SMU (11-1) in Charlotte, Swinney railed against the challenges college coaches face without a national officiating standard.

“It’s a problem all over the country. It is. To me, this has been one of the worst years in my entire coaching career, … and not just here, I’m talking about across college football. It’s been really bad. I mean bad,” Swinney complained. “And, again, the targeting. They’ve got some targeting they don’t even look at, they don’t even review them. Then you’ve got some that they make it up. So, I don’t know. It’s a national problem, it really is, for everybody. On all sides. It’s really been a tough year, I think.”

When asked by a reporter if there was any accountability for officials that make faulty rulings in games, Swinney pointed to clear discrepencies between officials from different leagues.

“I don’t know. That was the SEC (officials vs. South Carolina), so I don’t know how they handle their business over there,” Swinney said. “We have some accountability within our league. (ACC Supervisor of Football Officials Alberto Riveron) and I have had some conversations this year, that’s for sure. And you know, you get a lot of ‘Yeah, we agree. We were wrong.’

“So that’s accountability, and then he has to handle that within his group. But there’s no public accountability, I’ll tell you that. And this ain’t no hobby for us.”

It’s the part-time nature of college officials, who generally earn on average about $53,000 per year according to Comparably, and overall lack of public accountability that’s the crux of Swinney’s issue.

“I just think you probably need full-time people doing it,” Swinney continued. “These are big, big moments at this level. It’s big. And you’ve got some unexplainable stuff.”

Case in point, Swinney cited Alabama‘s controversial overturned touchdown against Oklahoma that was called back for “illegal touching” because officials ruled freshman receiver Ryan Williams was “covered up” by another Alabama player at the line of scrimmage, thus making Williams ineligible on the play.

“These are game-changing things,” Swinney said. “Again, for coaches, this ain’t a hobby for us. … And anytime you have people involved, you’re going to have some mistakes. But those were like, there’s been some just ‘Wow, I can’t believe that happened’ type moments. … There’s just not a lot of transparency. … That’s probably one thing all of us coaches agree on, we probably all wish we had some type of standard, but we don’t.”