Dabo Swinney calls out ACC, ESPN for asking Clemson to move rivalry game vs. Gamecocks

When Clemson athletic director Graham Neff got news earlier this year that the ACC and ESPN wanted the school to move its home football game against South Carolina up a day, he went straight to the man at the top of the program.

And Dabo Swinney, as expected, had plenty of thoughts.

Swinney on Tuesday made his first public comments on the television network and the conference’s request for Clemson to move its annual rivalry game against South Carolina — which is usually held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving — up one day to Black Friday this year.

The university denied the request.

The back-and-forth didn’t come to light, though, until Clemson included an email exchange revealing the request in an exhibit to a July 2 court filing in Clemson vs. ACC, the lawsuit it filed in an attempt to break out of conference’s grant of rights in March in Pickens County, South Carolina.

“(Neff) did ask for my opinion on that,” Swinney said Tuesday during Clemson’s on-campus media day ahead of the 2024 season. “I was against it for several reasons. I said I’m happy to go do it in Columbia, if that’s what they want to do. But I was against it because I don’t think it was what’s best for Clemson.”

The Clemson-South Carolina football rivalry game, one of the longest running ones in the country, is traditionally a late-season matchup and hasn’t happened earlier than November in 64 years. And every meeting since 2006 has been held the Saturday two days after Thanksgiving in late November.

Swinney, who’s worked at Clemson since 2003 and is entering his 16th full season as head coach, said he’s come to appreciate the timing of that game and how it allows everyone involved to spend time with their families on Thanksgiving before using Friday (if necessary) to travel ahead of a Saturday game.

He also cited business concerns and logistics concerns for the city of Clemson, which is one of the smaller cities nationally to house a Power 4 athletics program and had some struggles the last time the school’s football game hosted a non-Saturday game in 2019 (Thursday vs. Georgia Tech) at Memorial Stadium.

“I think sometimes we forget to do what’s best for Clemson,” Swinney said. “(Moving the game to Friday) is not what’s best for this town. It’s not what’s best for this community. This is not some big city, you know? The people in this town, they make their hay off of those Saturdays.”

Swinney added that under the game’s current scheduling setup, students who are away from campus on Thanksgiving break are able to travel back without missing out on family time and “create the type of atmosphere that we want.”

“Again, I’ve been here going on 22 years, so that’s my perspective: What’s best for our students, what’s best for this town, what’s best for our fans and what’s best for recruiting,too,” Swinney said. “That’s usually a big official visit weekend for us. ... And now you’re trying to get recruits here to leave their homes on Thanksgiving. That’s hard to do. And some of them are still playing on Fridays.”

An ACC official said in an email to Neff dated May 7 that the conference was “disappointed” in Clemson’s “lack of cooperation on this matter,” adding that other schools in the conference such as UNC, NC State, Georgia Tech, Virginia and Virginia Tech had moved their rivalry games to Black Friday in the past.

As part of the request, the ACC wrote it had secured a number of “concessions” from ESPN to make the date change “more agreeable.” Those included a guaranteed noon kickoff for Clemson’s home game vs. The Citadel the week before; switching the Tigers’ planned 2027 opener (at NC State on Labor Day Monday) to a Clemson home game instead; and an agreement for South Carolina to host Clemson in an identical primetime Black Friday game in the future.

Clemson, instead, will host South Carolina as previously scheduled on Saturday Nov. 30 in the final week of the 2024 regular season. TV channel and kickoff time will be determined at a later date.

“As all ACC members know, it is incumbent upon the ACC and its institutions to work in good faith with ESPN on football scheduling issues,” Michael Strickland, the league’s senior associate commissioner for football, wrote in the email revealed in court filings. “This cooperation maximizes the value of our relationship with our media partner and strengthens our collective future. Clemson’s decision not to do so in this instance is harmful toward that goal.”

Clemson’s refusal to accommodate the request from the ACC and ESPN drew significant attention, with many Tigers fans celebrating the decision. Swinney said he appreciated that Neff reached out to him and supported his opinion.

“If they want us to go down there and play on Friday night (in Columbia) next year, we’ll do it,” Swinney said. “But these Saturdays in the Valley are special, and they mean a lot to the fan base here. Again, if it was a normal week and we’re in school and things like that, maybe it could have been a little bit of a different conversation. But that wasn’t something that I was for.”