Dan Radakovich was supposed to be taking questions regarding the approval of Dabo Swinney’s record contract on Friday.

Instead, Clemson’s athletic director had to field a barrage of questions from the media in regard to assistant men’s basketball coach Steve Smith’s comments that were heard in in a Federal Court Thursday in New York.

In the proceeding, a video was played of a wiretap recording that included Smith talking to convicted felon Christian Dawkins and an undercover FBI agent. The recording was from a conversation taken in July of 2017 about the recruitment of former Duke star Zion Williamson.

Smith also made a couple of comments regarding the Clemson Football Program during the conversation.

“I think we feel very strongly that those were unfortunate comments and we are doing our due diligence,” Radakovich said. “But there is no reason to believe, and nothing we have been able to find at this point and time, that implicates the football program in any of that. It was a very unfortunate choice of words.”

Radakovich said the Clemson Athletic Department will begin a formal review of Smith’s comments, but the football program will not be involved in the investigation.

“Not at this point and time,” he said. “We are going to be reviewing and hopefully we will be able to get some data that will allow us to be able to do a review. But at this point and time there is nothing that we have seen that implicates football at all.

“I want to be really clear about that. There is nothing about those statements that we have been able to find that implicates football.”

Some of the comments insinuated the Clemson football program was participating in illegal recruiting practices, while he was trying to possibly get a leg up or information in the recruitment of Williamson.

“I was disappointed,” Radakovich said when he was asked about his initial reaction upon learning of Smith’s comments on Twitter. “I think college athletics is college athletics. There are a lot of schools around the country that are dealing with some of this right now.

“My big thing is if we are going to deal with it, we are going to deal with it in an upfront transparent way and we are going to make the best decision for Clemson. That is what we are looking to do. I really don’t have any other comments on that because I have not really dove into it, yet.”

As of Friday morning, Radakovich said he has not spoken with Smith, but he plays to speak to him soon. He also said Smith, as of today, is not on administrative leave.

Clemson’s assistant basketball coaches were originally on the compensation committee’s agenda Friday to approve each coach with a new one-year extension on their existing contract, which will expire on April 30.

“I had a conversation with Coach (Brad) Brownell and the board will have some other opportunities here shortly to pull together. We just need to be able to do a few things that were not able to be handled quickly because of a lot of people being spread out and focused on this particular meeting.

“We will be sure to get that done and we will talk about that in the days to come.”

Radakovich confirmed the athletic department was not aware of any comments Smith made in the FBI’s investigation into illegal practices by Christian Dawkins, until they saw the tweets coming out of Federal Court on Thursday. He said he has spoken with Brownell and Swinney about what Smith said.

As expected, neither coach was happy, especially Swinney.

“I kind of let him know what we are doing. Kind of our background of course. Dabo reiterated what I think we all knew. There is no issue related to the football program from this standpoint.

“So, we will just continue to talk to Coach Smith. Find out what he knows. How he did it. Why he did it. What the comments meant and then we will begin to make a decision as to where we need to go. And it will be done quickly.”

In some of his comments heard in Federal Court, Smith basically said he had to pretend to Brownell on the drive to see Williamson that he did not know how to get there.

“That is a problem,” Radakovich said. “It is a problem especially if you are in an employee-supervisor relationship. You would think all of those things are a little bit more transparent than that. It is something we will look in to.”

Radakovich believes Brownell knew nothing about what Smith was doing.

“There is nothing in anything that has been put out there right now that implicates Coach Brownell. I want to be clear about that,” the athletic director said. “I think that is really part of where we need to continue to do our due diligence and kind of move forward.”