"It just doesn't matter."
On Halloween night, the College Football Playoff committee released their initial rankings giving the college football world a lot to discuss over leftover candy from the holidays.
The rankings are a good indicator of where teams stand at the moment in the committee’s eyes and generate conversation for the fans, but nothing more.
Clemson has not been outside of the top four for the last two years since the rankings have been released late in October.
Head coach Dabo Swinney was asked Tuesday morning on how he would view the rankings and the committee if his Tigers were not ranked in the top four.
His answer was simple:
“Zero. They could have us tenth."
“It just doesn’t matter. If they have us second and we get our butt beat this week, then it won’t matter.”
Swinney’s mentality for the longest time has been if you don’t perform on Saturdays, then the rankings won’t mean anything anyway. The only poll that matters is the final poll that is released after Championship Saturday.
That’s why pizza was involved that Sunday morning back in December 2015.
Everything else just creates conversation for the fans and a distracting noise for the program.
There is no point in wasting energy focusing on things that you cannot control. The philosophy for Swinney is that if his team wins out, then the rest will take care of itself.
“I think we have a played a pretty good schedule. We have played a lot of teams that have won a bunch of games and a lot of teams that have been in position to win some others. You just got to take care of business. It’s that simple.”
Swinney repeated “It just doesn’t matter” five times during his answer on Tuesday morning. Some of his leaders echoed that same mindset this week.
Kelly Bryant said he probably wasn’t going to watch ESPN's show releasing the rankings because it didn’t matter.
Co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott said that if the team doesn’t take care of business in Raleigh this weekend, it wouldn’t matter.
“We’ve got a lot of ball to play,” Scott said.
Scott is right. There is a lot of football left to be played and a lot of chaos yet to be endured this college football season. There is no time to get caught up where you are at the moment because teams have fallen off in the blink of an eye.
“It is so irrelevant to what is going to happen in Raleigh this weekend,” Swinney said.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban refers to this kind of stuff from the media as “rat poison” to his program and won’t be paying attention to any of the hype that surrounds the rankings.
Swinney has a similar mindset.
He said Wednesday after practice that the conversations created from the rankings have a positive impact on college football and creates more fandom all across the country.
However, to the coaches and players the rankings just “kill brain cells.”
“All this is is just potential,” Swinney said. “Potentially, if we take care of business, we can be in that conversation. You got to go do it, man. Well done is better than well said. The good news is we have a chance to go do it.”
So, on Halloween night, Swinney was far removed from the initial rankings and the conversation that came with it.
He said that he literally forgot about ESPN’s show unveiling the rankings because he was in such a hurry to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating with his sons.
Until his wife, Kathleen, called him with the news that the Tigers came in ranked at number four. Apparently, it matters to her.
“She was like ‘I know you don’t care… but I am so happy we are number four!’ so I was a good husband for ten seconds. Then I was like ‘Kath, let’s just hope we are happy Sunday.’”
If they are happy Sunday, then that means that the Tigers are one step closer to the goals they have set every season. Making the top four is not one of them. The goal is to be the best they can be.
Swinney harped Tuesday morning on what the motto “Best is the Standard” means in his program.
“We don’t want to be the best because that is in comparison to somebody else,” Swinney said. “We want to be our best. Whatever God gave you, just be the best you can possibly be.”
Everything else just doesn’t matter.