Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney did not watch the unveiling of the first college football playoff bracket.
On Tuesday night, he was not watching film of N.C. State. That had been done earlier in the day. Swinney instead was busy inhaling some birthday cake as his mother celebrated her 75th birthday.
Swinney had said earlier in the day at his weekly news conference that the first ranking released by the committee did not matter in the big scheme of things and the national pundits backed him up. LSU vs Alabama (3:30 pm on CBS/WLTX 19) and Ohio State vs Penn State are two of the matchups that will shake up the bracket. As long as Clemson wins out, the Tigers should be in the final bracket that matters most.
But what does matters in Swinney's mind is the lack of respect for his team and the ACC in general. The 21-20 win at UNC appears to have kept the Tigers out of the initial top four which Swinney actually likes because he can play the lack of respect card. If it comes down to it, Swinney can also play the card of SEC bias as he sees Alabama doing to that league what the Tigers have done in the ACC.
"Who has beaten Alabama in the SEC? Who? How many games have they lost in the last five years in their conference? You've got to really think about that, don't you. It ain't many. But yet we've had a great run in our conference and it's only because there's nobody else any good," Swinney said.
"It's just the rhetoric and it's the same and it just doesn't matter. We play our schedule. I can't control what other people think or say. But I'll tell you this - our league has had the most bowl teams in the last three years of any conference in college football, We've done really, really well. And nobody wants to talk about that."