Another media member again wrong about Swinney
By: will-vandervort May 28, 2019

First off, we don’t know everything South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said Tuesday when he was asked about compensating players during a press gathering with the media from the SEC Spring Meetings.

I’m not sure if the question was centered around Dabo Swinney’s statements from the last couple of weeks when he was asked the same questions at the ACC Spring Meetings. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Who knows? I was not there.

However, I did ask Swinney myself this question two weeks ago and at no point did he say he did not want to compensate players, which is the narrative some in the national and regional media are saying.

As for Muschamp, Edgar Thompson, who covers the Florida Gators for The Orlando Sentinel, quoted Muschamp saying Tuesday, ‘I’m absolutely in support of it. As much as we can help the players we need to.”

The Twitter account called SEC Mike, who is the editor for Saturdays Down South, compared Muschamp’s quote to Swinney’s comments, and he did it without knowing the full context of the quote and how the question was presented to Muschamp. He is also not grabbing the full context of Swinney’s comments.

I’m bringing this up because I am getting sick of other media members saying Swinney is not in favor of compensating his players. This is what some might call fake news. As I wrote last week, Swinney did not say he did not want to compensate players. He said he did not want to “professionalize” the sport. Those are two different meanings altogether.

After all, college football is still an amateur sport, right?

But, again, here is what Swinney actually said when talking to The Clemson Insider at the ACC Spring Meetings. I asked him on the day the NCAA announced it has appointed a working group to examine issues highlighted in a recently proposed federal and state legislation related to a student-athlete’s name, image and likeness.

Hopefully, others in the media will try and really pay attention to what Swinney is saying, instead of taking shots in the dark.

“I would love to see there be some type of stipend or annuity or something where upon graduation they would have access to something, so it will be tied to the student-athlete, which ultimately is what it should be about,” Swinney said.