Clemson’s Dabo Swinney on Coaching Salaries: ‘I Don’t Apologize for Being Successful’

Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images

Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney commented Saturday on his hefty salary, one day after opposing any movement to “professionalize” college sports.

According to ESPN’s Chris Low, Swinney said the following when asked about those who bring up high coaching salaries as a reason  college athletes should be paid:

“Well, [Alabama head football coach] Nick Saban is 70 years old. I’m 52 years old. None of us set markets on what we do. We live in a capitalist society. The head of Delta probably makes a lot more than the people who are checking your baggage in, but those people are as vital as anybody. None of us set markets on what we do. It’s a free market we live in, in anything. It’s just that our jobs are so visible and so public. I can tell you this: None of us got into coaching to make money, but I don’t apologize for being successful.”

Per Low, Swinney said Friday that while he isn’t against the NCAA’s name, image and likeness (NIL) rules allowing college athletes to make money, he has concerns about what it could lead to:

“I am against anything that devalues education. That’s what I’m against. I am for anything that incentivizes education. People will come after me because I’ve always said that I’m against the professionalism of college athletics, and I am. Kids don’t know what they don’t know. That’s a slippery slope if you professionalize college athletics, and now you’ve got salaries and taxes and you can fire kids on the spot and they’ve got to pay for their tuition and they pay for their housing and everything else. Athletic directors would sign up for that in a heartbeat. They’d save money.”

When USA Today released its list of the highest-paid head coaches in college football in November, Swinney was fourth on the list with an average annual salary of over $8.3 million.

This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.

Get the best sports content from the web and social in the B/R app. Get the app and get the game.