Dabo says FSU postponing game ‘an insult to the credibility of our program’
Dabo Swinney held his weekly radio show Monday night, and a caller brought up Florida State’s decision to postpone Saturday’s game after a Clemson player tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday.
Swinney spoke for about four minutes and 30 seconds about the decision. Here is everything he said:
“I think we’re all pretty disappointed in the situation. The rules have been one way for 10 weeks and then all of a sudden they change on a Saturday morning. So it was pretty disappointing.
I know what the facts are. I laid them out very clear. And you know, I don’t make the rules. And our medical people run all of that. We met the standard to play. It’s a shot at our medical people. Point blank. And I also know for a fact that Pitt traveled there and had a kid test positive there, and they still played the game. That’s kind of interesting too.
But the bottom line is it certainly was frustrating, because there’s so much that goes into it. People have no idea the protocols that we have in place here. And our kids have bought in. I mean how many guys opted out here this year? How many opted out? I told everybody, nobody had to be here. No coach. No player. They could come back in January. Everybody’s here, because we have a lot of trust in this program and we do things the right way, and we love our players.
The last thing we would ever do is put somebody in harm’s way. And it’s an insult to the credibility of our program, the credibility of our medical people. And we all agreed to the same rules, and just magically those rules changed on Saturday morning.
I don’t give a crap what they say. I know what the facts are. I know what the standard to play is. I know why the rosters were expanded, because we anticipated positives on Friday. So we said we needed to take more players. The only thing that was going to cancel a game is if you got below 53 scholarship players, you didn’t have at least seven scholarship offensive linemen, or your local community was overrun with hospitals, etc. etc. And other than that you play the game.
And there’s trust that both teams are following all the protocols and all those things. So all I can tell you is that’s what we’ve done all year. And there’s been positives all year at every program. We’ve not had many, but we’ve had positives. Obviously Trevor. So it’s just unfortunate that it wasn’t resolved as it could’ve been. It should’ve been resolved.
We had no positives yesterday. Zero. We tested yesterday, zero. We had 150 tests Friday, one positive. And we didn’t travel anybody with (symptoms). Are you kidding me? This was a backup offensive lineman that wasn’t even going to probably play. Do you think … I mean it’s just crazy.
But anyway, it’s a frustrating deal and it is what it is. So they made the decision. Nobody over here agreed with it, from our President to our medical advisory group to our AD to all of my bosses. I don’t make the decisions. I coach the team. I just know what the rules are, and I know what they’ve been all year. And they just magically changed. And again, I know Pitt went down there and played, and they had a positive kid. But they played the game. The rules were never set up that if you had a positive on Friday you canceled the game. Never set up that way. And I’m not trying to be a doctor. I just listen to my doctors… 1,000 percent, that’s why it was stated, because they wanted it to be very clear that there was a disagreement.
So it’s frustrating. So we move on. But I know what the facts are. And people can say whatever they want to say. Their coach can say whatever he wants to say. So I know this, our kids have been all in, all year. And done everything asked of them. So when somebody wants to make it like we’ve not done something, I have a problem with that and I’m going to fight for that and I’m going to stand up for what’s right. And if that bothers people then too bad. If telling the truth is wrong then guess what? Too bad. Because I’m going to tell the truth, and that’s exactly what happened.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 10:09 PM.
