Swinney justifies ranking Ohio State outside Top 10

Voting in the Coaches Poll is a task that is often passed on to the school SID, but Clemson’s Dabo Swinney has always proudly taken advantage of the opportunity to give his thoughts on teams across the country.

However, this season, his evaluation of Ohio State came under scrutiny after Swinney ranked the Buckeyes No. 11 in his final ballot, five spots lower than any other coach. Yesterday, on ESPN, Swinney attempted to justify his decision, in what has become a major talking point in Columbus as the No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes will face No. 2 Clemson in the Sugar Boal in a rematch of last season’s epic 29-23 Fiesta Bowl win.

Swinney said that even though Ohio State is a quality team, he feels like others were penalized because they played more games than the 6-0 Big Ten Champions.

“Obviously, they're a great team. They're plenty good enough and talented enough to beat us-- and good enough to win the national championship,” Swinney said. “But in my opinion, I don't think that it's right that three teams have to play 13 games to win it all, and one team has to play eight.”

Swinney then listed several teams that he believes could have been where Ryan Day’s squad is only playing six games this season.

“In my opinion, Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Cincinnati-- they got punished for playing more games,” Swinney stated.

In fairness to Swinney, he’s correct. Had Clemson packed things in a 7-0 this season, it’s possible that they would have entered the ACC Championship Game ranked No. 2 in America without playing their final slate of games, including their 47-40 loss to Notre Dame in double-overtime.

Had Florida not played LSU. Had Texas A&M not had to play Alabama, perhaps an undefeated Aggie team from the SEC West would have been in. Who knows? And to be fair. Ohio State’s performance against Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship left a lot to be desired.

Ohio State enters the playoff with wins over Nebraska (3-5), Penn State (4-5), Rutgers (3-6), Maryland (2-3), Indiana (6-1), Michigan State (2-5) and Northwestern (6-2). Not exactly a laundry list of top tier opponents.

Swinney also said that his vote was only about the number of games played and that he didn’t believe the Buckeyes six-game schedule was enough to qualify them as a Top 10 team. He also noted that he would have done the same thing for any team.

"First of all, my poll doesn't mean anything. But it means something to me, you know. It's my poll. I do it. It creates a stir because we just so happen to be playing Ohio State. It has nothing to do with Ohio State-- absolutely zero,” Swinney said. “You can change the name to Michigan or Georgia or Florida or Tennessee or Nebraska. I wanted to recognize the teams that played nine games or more.”

Now Clemson’s two-time National Championship winning head coach will face off with the Buckeyes this Friday as his poll continues to cause a stir for the Ohio State faithful. 

“If you didn't play nine games, I just didn't consider you for the Top 10. That's why they were No. 11.”

Kickoff is set for 8:00 PM on ESPN as Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit are on the call.