Dabo Swinney explains why NIL isn't professionalizing CFB, enhances scholarships

Fair or not, Dabo Swinney has become one of the de-facto faces of an anti-NIL mob that believes it’s hurting the sport of college football more than it’s helping.

Evidently, Swinney doesn’t see himself in that light. Speaking with reporters ahead of the beginning of the 2022 season, he stated that he believes the idea that he’s against NIL has been one pushed by the media, and let the world know his true thoughts on the matter.

“I’m for anything that values educations. That’s what I’ve always said. NIL to me, it’s a part of education,” stated Swinney. “It’s an opportunity to — it’s maximizing, it’s enhancing the scholarship opportunity. It’s a part of — it’s an opportunity to educate our young men and equip them even more for real life.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to again, teach and prepare and train.”

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Continuing, the Clemson coach added that he doesn’t believe the rhetoric that NIL is professionalizing the sport of college football.

“There’s a lot of talk in college football about professionalizing. NIL is not professionalizing. It’s not. That’s them being able to do what they want to do with their name, their image and their likeness,” added Swinney. “I think I would hate to see you go away from a collegiate model. You know, scholarships. I would love to see them enhance the scholarships. I would love to see us make sure that we don’t ever get away from the main thing in college athletics, and that is education. We know that 98% are not going to play in the NFL. That is not some make believe thing. So if we don’t education the main thing, we’re going to have a lot of guys with not degrees. We’re going to have a lot of people, especially in the transfer portal and all this stuff, you’re going to have kids all over the place and next thing you know they’re going to end up in a ditch. They’re not going to be equipped. They’re not going to have degrees.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, I’m very well qualified to speak on it. This is, to me I would love to see them further incentivize graduation. I would love that. However you want to get to it. That to me would be an awesome thing. Because I think the more we can incentivize graduation, the better it is for the young people that are playing this game.”

As you can see, Dabo Swinney has some strong thoughts on NIL and it’s affect on the college athletics world, but it isn’t the villainous stance that he’s been said to have throughout the last couple of months.