Dabo Swinney once declared he’d quit if players got paid — Clemson now has a fancy NIL facility

Dabo Swinney is up to his old tricks again. Every year it seems like Clemson’s football head coach says or does something that reminds us of just how wild it is that a 50-plus-year-old grown man named William still goes by the nickname of Dabo. Well, “that boy” — which is what Dabo stems from — has put his foot in his mouth…again.

Almost a decade after Swinney infamously declared he’d quit if college players were paid when he said, “We try to teach our guys, use football to create the opportunities, take advantage of the platform and the brand and the marketing you have available to you. But as far as paying players, and professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else because there’s enough entitlement in this world as it is,” — Clemson announced on Wednesday that they’d just opened the Allen N. Reeves Clemson Athletics Branding Institute as the “first dedicated facility for student-athlete branding and education”… that will help players get paid.

“We’re going to call it The CAB because what does a cab do? It gives you a lift to your destination,” Swinney said. “But guess what, you’ve gotta pay the fare. We can’t do it for you. You’ve got to do the work. I’m really excited about it because it’s a living, breathing space where our guys know they can go for expertise.

“If you’re injured, you go to the training room. If you want to get stronger, you go to the weight room. This was an opportunity for our guys to know that if they want help with branding and sponsorship and NIL and tax education and finances and all of these very real-world issues, you go to The CAB where we have a dedicated space with people ready to help them.”

Back in December, Swinney also said, “We built this program on NIL….We built this program in God’s name, image, and likeness.”

Like I said, a clown.