On Wednesday, the ACC announced that Florida State and Georgia Tech will open the 2024 football season in Dublin, Ireland, in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. The game, which will be the ACC opener for both schools, will be held Aug. 24, 2024, at Aviva Stadium, and Georgia Tech will serve as the home team.
Following Clemson’s scrimmage on Wednesday, Dabo Swinney was asked how he would feel about taking his team overseas. That led to a funny response from the Tigers’ head coach, who shared a story about how his name is in the Vatican.
“Let’s go. International, man,” Swinney said in response to the aforementioned question. “I mean, all we ever get to do is go to like Winston-Salem and places like that. (Brad) Brownell and the boys, they get to go to Hawaii and Italy. Hey, spread the love a little bit. … Let’s go to wherever. Let’s go to the Vatican. My name is in the Vatican, just so you know. My name, Dabo, is in the Vatican. Yeah, look it up.”
Swinney used to think his name, Dabo, just meant “Dat Boy”. But he was later informed that it means “I will give” in Latin.
“When I got the job in ’08, this guy comes up to me at the Shrine Bowl and he says, ‘Hey, Coach, do you know what your name means in Latin?’ And my exact words, I looked at him and I went, ‘My name’s a word?’” Swinney recalled. “Because my whole life, y’all can imagine growing up in Alabama with a name like Dabo, you get some ridicule. It just kind of comes with it. My name was ‘Dat Boy’, right, that’s how I got my name. … But you grow up with that, and then lo and behold in ’08, I go to the Shrine Bowl and the guy tells me my name is a word, and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ My name means ‘I will give’ in Latin.
“So later on, I get to the Vatican and they got all those Latin sentences, and there I am, I’m right there — Dabo. And all them guys that made fun of me my whole life, I don’t see Bill or Bob or John. I don’t see any of them. I don’t see Jeff up in the Vatican, but I’m in the Vatican.”
“So, let’s go to Rome and we’ll do a field trip to the Vatican,” Swinney added. “That’d be fun. We can’t play at the Colosseum. It feels a little choppy, too. It’s a little messed up, but we’ll find a place. Maybe we’ll play out where they used to do the chariot races in front of the Roman Castle or whatever.”
Dear Old Clemson has added the Tiger Sack Pack to our online store. Save by getting the Two Pack of signed cards from two of the nation’s top defensive ends, Myles Murphy and Xavier Thomas.
Now there is a new way you can support Clemson student-athletes. Purchase collectibles from Dear Old Clemson and the proceeds with go to support Clemson student-athletes. 
Dear Old Clemson is doing NIL the ‘Clemson way’, but we need your help to make sure we build a sustainable, repeatable model that will help keep Clemson competitive with the other top programs around the nation.
Dabo Swinney: “We need your assistance more than ever to provide meaningful NIL opportunities. Tiger Impact, Dear Old Clemson and other collectives allow student-athletes to utilize their voice and platform to maximize their NIL opportunities and strengthen their impact in the community.”
Graham Neff:
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