Matt Hayes believes Dabo Swinney recently took a hard lesson.
From there, in his perspective, Clemson isn’t slipping in a wake of bad breaks and near losses — rather, it is slipping because it won’t make the transition to a collegiate football life that’s not the same. A truth that Hayes openly calls an “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’” era.
And in that framing, Swinney is not a whistleblower. He’s some old-timey idealist being passed over by programs ready to do anything to get something done. Hayes points to the numbers.