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Dabo Swinney has taken some heat over the past few months for not wanting to move Clemson’s annual game with South Carolina.
The game has been played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and it is widely considered the most important sporting event in the state of South Carolina every year.
The two teams first met in 1896 and played every year between 1909 and 2019, making it the longest uninterrupted rivalry game in college football history. The series was unfortunately interrupted in 2020 due to COVID and the SEC deciding to play a conference only schedule that year.
This year, ESPN has a different idea for the rivalry game. The four-letter network was interested in moving up the game by a day, and playing on the Friday night after Thanksgiving.
To the casual fan, that might seem like a great idea. More exposure for a rivalry matchup that absolutely doesn’t get the respect it deserves on a national level.
However, there are several reasons that Swinney and Clemson were not on board with the idea, with one of the bigger ones being recruiting. Every home game the Tigers have a number of recruits on hand and the regular season finale against the Gamecocks is no different.
“It’s what’s best for our program when it comes to recruiting and getting people here and all those things,” head coach Dabo Swinney said during his weekly Sunday Zoom call. “There’s a lot of kids that we’re recruiting, that they’re playing on Friday. They’re playing in playoff games, So now they can’t come to our game.”
In some areas of this state, Friday nights are sacred. They are meant for high school football and at this time of the year many teams are right in the middle of a playoff run. Obviously, if a recruit is playing on a Friday night, he couldn’t visit for a rivalry game played on the same night. No one is missing a playoff game for a recruiting visit.
Getting a potential prospect on campus for a visit is crucial when it comes to recruiting. There is a strong argument to be made for why Clemson would not want to lose what is, without a doubt, the biggest sporting event in the state each year as one of its recruiting tools.
“We want them to have the opportunity to come to one of the biggest games going on in the country, and they can’t,” Swinney added. “They can’t come to it if they’re playing in their game as well.”