Clemson Coach Who Makes $9 Million A Year Doesn’t Want To See College Football Players Paid

Well paid coach doesn’t like players who want to be paid.

Dabo Swinney is a really good college football coach. Swinney gets paid more than $9 million annually to run the Clemson football program.  Clemson is again playing for a college football championship against Louisiana State University with all of the trappings of a major New Orleans sports event. The business of college sports still prides itself as an amateur venture, meaning the players should be happy getting a chance at an education and a scholarship but not get paid. Clemson University itself or getting subsidies from people associated with the Clemson football program is paying Swinney $93 million over a ten-year period. Swinney has won two of the past three NCAA playoffs using student-athletes in a business where everyone else is paid. Players are said to be performing for the mere love of the game as student-athletes. The phrase student-athlete was invented by NCAA executive director Walter Byers in 1955 as a dodge which allowed schools to get away with not paying athletes.

Clemson players are putting their necks on the line. They get no salary, no long-term health care. Swinney’s players can get something more than bruises from a game if they decide to pursue a free education. Swinney makes big money off his players’ collective backs but doesn’t think his players need to get paid. In 2014, Swinney said, “We try to teach our guys, use football to create the opportunities. Take advantage of the platform and the brand and the marketing you have available to you. But as far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else, because there’s enough entitlement in this world as it is.” Swinney is the poster boy for what is exactly wrong with college sports. Coaches making big money off of unpaid workers who have little to show for their experience.