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Why Clemson's Dabo Swinney said college football teams should play 3-4 preseason games
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- Why Clemson's Dabo Swinney said college football teams should play 3-4 preseason games
CLEMSON — If Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney could have his way, the Tigers would play preseason games.
His concern doesn't just stem from No. 6 Clemson hosting No. 9 LSU on Aug. 30 (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC) at Memorial Stadium to start the season and Clemson losing its last two season openers. Swinney said the first game of the college football season is always challenging because there's not enough information known about the teams.
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Clemson has also faced a ranked or ACC opponent to start the season since 2019 compared to other Power 4 programs scheduling against FCS or Group of 5 teams.
"We're the only level of football that has zero preseason games," Swinney said Aug. 26. "You got billions of dollars and millions of dollars at stake, there's a reason why they play all them preseason games in the NFL because they need to evaluate."
LSU added 18 transfers to rank as the best portal class in 2025, according to 247Sports. Swinney said he and his staff can prepare by looking at LSU's games from 2024 but will experience some "unknowns" in the opener with those new players and how much others have improved.
Watching a team's spring game used to be a helpful option, but programs have canceled or altered the presentation of those exhibitions. Swinney was a proponent for adding joint practices and scrimmages with other teams in the spring, too, like Division II and III schools and other sports like basketball and baseball.
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"Until you get three-to-four games in a season, you don't really truly know what a team's identity is," Swinney said. "You just don't. If you had three or four preseason games, you could kind of have a little bit more of a feel for your identity."
This applies to Swinney's team too. He said he won't know Clemson's true identity because there's only so much his team can do in practice, sessions can get repetitive and the need to develop players and protect quarterbacks from getting hit. He added practices and Clemson's two scrimmages in camp gives him a feeling about the roster, but preseason games would help confirm his intuition.
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However, his Week 1 coaching opponent, LSU coach Brian Kelly, isn't ready to go that far, citing injury concerns.
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"There's things I do like about it, but sometimes you bring in another team, and they have something that they want to prove against you, and they're not in the right emotional zone," Kelly said Aug. 25. "They do some things that maybe put you at risk with your top guys."
Swinney said he has no fear of injury if preseason games were added. He believes preseason games would be huge for communities too, guaranteeing this spring more than 50,000 people could show up to an August preseason game.
Derrian Carter covers Clemson athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at dcarter@gannett.com and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DerrianCarter00
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Dabo Swinney: Clemson football coach wants 3-4 preseason games
