All anyone wants to talk about in college football these days is NIL. Allowing athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness while permitting them to transfer without restrictions has forced schools to totally reimagine recruiting and player retention.
But the more things change, the more some things stay the same. Take, for example, this quote from Dabo Swinney. The Clemson coach has always run his program kind of like a church (complete with baptisms after practice), and he gave a heck of a sermon during his press conference before the Orange Bowl.
“We built this program on NIL. We really did,” Swinney said. “It’s probably different from what you’re thinking, though. We built this program in God’s name, image and likeness.”
You can tell by the way he smirked while delivering it that Dabo was awfully proud of that line. I wonder how long he was sitting on it.
The line is corny—it sounds like something you’d come up with if you were trying to parody Swinney—but there’s no reason to doubt its sincerity. Under Swinney, Clemson has always intertwined football and faith, for better or worse.
In a 2019 Sports Illustrated article, Tim Rohan examined Swinney’s evangelism. The coach’s faith appeared to help Clemson land some recruits (like D.J. Uiagalelei, who cited Christianity as the top reason he picked the Tigers), but it also caught the eye of a nonprofit organization called the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which received numerous complaints about Clemson and sent the state school a letter saying it was violating the first amendment and asking it to stop the post-practice baptisms, bible studies, team prayers and church trips. Swinney actually built his program in God’s name, image and likeness a little too much.
