Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney does not think anyone should be distracted by the way a team warms up or gets itself ready to play.
Swinney reaffirmed his comments from Monday night’s call-in show that South Carolina play-by-play announcer Todd Ellis’ comments about the Tigers’ “Walk of Champions” was ridiculous.
Ellis said during last week’s Will Muschamp call-in show that Clemson’s “Walk of Champions” provokes the South Carolina student body to throw things on the field.
“The bottom line is you can yell, scream and holler, I think that is part of it. But when you start throwing things at people … it is all fun and games until somebody gets their eye knocked out,” Swinney said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “That is why I got frustrated a couple of years ago and really lost my cool and got a penalty. You know there is a major lawsuit in the NFL where an official threw a flag and hit a guy in the eye. It was a flag and it about blinded the guy.
“All of sudden you got things coming out of the stands, whether it’s bottles, batteries or whatever it may be. That is not got good.”
Swinney continued that he knows a lot of great South Carolina fans and he has friends that are Gamecock fans
“That is not representative of who they are,” he said. “It is just a few people that just don’t handle themselves the right way. You want to have a great spirit to competition. It is a rivalry game. You get that, it is emotional, but that is dangerous. That is not something you should do.
“To suggest that it could be okay because of something the other team is doing, that is ridiculous. That basically means if someone is flipping me the bird, I can throw something at them. I get a lot of those. Not just at South Carolina, I get them at a lot of places. There is a lot of stuff that sooner or later people have to be adults.”
The Clemson coach understands Saturday’s game is an important game for both sides and everybody is passionate about it, but there is right and there is wrong, and they should not lose perspective because of the passion of one team.
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