CLEMSON PROFESSOR EDUCATES CLEMSON COACH - WORDS OF WISDOM

DABO SWINNEY and DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 

Not too many Kossacks are prone to talk football in diaries. Colin Kapernick has altered that a bit over the past few weeks.  

The Carolinas border city Charlotte is the scene of great unrest and some violence this week. And much is said of the horrific tendency of police to use deadly force as the first option.  These events have had the effect of seeing college football coaches questioned with some interesting results — none more interesting than this.

Last Tuesday, Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney was asked to comment about Kaepernick‘s kneeling during the national anthem.  As head coach of the 2nd best team in college football last season: Dabo Swinney is exceptionally well paid and well covered by the media. His Clemson Tigers only lost one game last year — the National Championship to the Alabama Crimson Tide 45 to 40. 

This was Dabo’s response:

"I think everybody has the right to express himself in that regard," Swinney said. "But I don't think it's good to be a distraction to your team. I don't think it's good to use the team as a platform. I totally disagree with that. Not his protest. But I just think there's a right way to do things. I don't think two wrongs make a right. Never have, never will. I think it just creates more divisiveness, more division."

Swinney went on to discuss King, saying, "I hate to see what's going on in our country. I really do. I think this is a good world. I think this is a great country. It's just that things get painted with a broad brush in this world these days.

"There's more good than bad in this world. With Martin Luther King, I don't know that there's ever been a better man or better leader. To me, he changed the world. He changed the world through love in the face of hate. He changed the world through peace in the face of violence. He changed the world through education in the face of ignorance. And he changed the world through Jesus. Boy, that's politically incorrect. That's what he did. It's amazing when we don't learn from our past how you can repeat your mistakes."

NEYLAND STADIUM with U and T built as a student by my fraternity 

Being born on campus at Tennessee as son of a Torchbearer mom and UT Law student father teaching accounting as a grad assistant at the time of my birth; I was carried to UT football games as an infant. As freshman class and fraternity president when we built a copy of the iconic interlaced U and T on The Hill where we fired the scoring cannon. I was born into Big Orange Football I know the power & prestige of football coaches in the south 

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