Clemson coach Dabo Swinney sounds off on gambling concerns in college football

Given the recent uptick in gambling-related scandals across college sports, coach Dabo Swinney and the Clemson football team aren’t rolling the dice.

That means education, awareness and support of the NFL-style injury reporting protocol adopted by LSU football, another top national program, heading into the 2023 season.

Swinney, speaking during the second week of the Tigers’ fall camp schedule, said he and his staff talk with their players “a lot” about the dangers of sports betting, which was once a taboo subject but is now legal in the majority of states and has led to some prominent fall-outs.

Clemson’s longtime coach, whose team ranked No. 9 in the preseason coaches poll, also said he’d be “perfectly fine” with a standardized injury reporting system for college football teams.

“If you gamble, you’re gonna be done,” Swinney said. “You can’t gamble on college sports. Can’t do it. So it’s really a pretty straightforward message.”

LSU coach Brian Kelly said earlier this month the reigning SEC West champions would release injury reports twice a week (once during the week and once on gameday) to be more “transparent” and “proactive,” according to the Associated Press.

Kelly said one of his main concerns was gamblers pressuring staff members or players for inside information on who is or isn’t playing in a game, nuggets that could significantly alter how someone bets on a point spread, money line or other popular bets.

“I’m not saying that happened,” Kelly said Aug. 3, per AP. “I’m not saying that would happen. I think it’s better to be proactive in those situations and take away even the temptation to even have that in this building and not be that next school that goes down that path.”

Sports betting opportunities have skyrocketed across the United States ever since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law preventing most state-authorized sports gambling in 2018.

As of August 2023, 34 of the 50 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized sports betting, according to CBS Sports. South Carolina isn’t in that group, though a bill (H.B. 3749) to legalize sports betting was introduced into the state legislature in April.

Expanded gambling opportunities nationwide through sportsbooks such as FanDuel, DraftKings and Caesars have led to a number of scandals. Alabama fired its baseball coach, Brad Bohannon, in May after he was linked to suspicious betting activity on one of his team’s games against LSU; Cincinnati also fired two baseball staff members for their involvement.

Seven current or former Iowa and Iowa State – including Hunter Dekkers, the Cyclones’ 2022 starting quarterback – were also criminally charged this month as part of a gambling investigation earlier this summer, while the NFL has handed down a number of year-long suspensions on players who bet on games. (A notable one was Falcons and Jaguars receiver Calvin Ridley.)

Swinney said Wednesday that Clemson’s staff routinely monitors issues in college football, pro football and the news at large – when there’s “something stupid in the world going on” – and often distributes that information to players as a cautionary tale.

Mike Dooley, the team’s longtime director of football administration and player personnel, is often the one distributing those team-wide texts. And there’s been plenty of gambling-related messaging in recent months, Swinney said.

“The wise learn from others, right?” Swinney said. “We all learn from our own experiences, whether good or bad, mistakes, whatever. But wise people learn from others’ mistakes and successes. … So yeah, we’ve talked about it a lot.”

Influence of injury reports

While the NFL (long a top gambling option) requires teams to release injury reports throughout the week and before kickoff, college football injury reporting procedures are much looser and less consistent, varying by conference and often by team.

As Swinney noted, the ACC used to require teams to release injury reports ahead of conference games – but not non-conference games – before nixing that rule ahead of the 2018 season.

Clemson, in recent seasons, has provided an “availability report” 90 minutes before kickoff for home games and a travel roster 90 minutes before kickoff for road games as a holdover from the 2020 season affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Swinney also routinely discloses and addresses some – but not all – player injuries during midweek news conferences and said he wouldn’t mind a standardized process.

“I don’t really have a problem with it, to be honest with you,” Swinney said. “It’s really not that big a deal to me. I would be perfectly fine If I had to release it on Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. I think early in the week is probably (better). You know a guy’s out, it’s gonna come out either way.”

Though standardized injury reporting processes aren’t imminent, the NCAA has updated its gambling penalties for athletes. As of May 2023, athletes who “engage in activities to influence the outcomes of their own games,” provide insider information or bet on their own games/other sports games at their schools could permanently lose their eligibility.

Athletes who bet on sports at other schools could be suspended for up to 50% of a season, while other “wagering-related violations” such as betting on pro sports would be punished based on the amount of money spent, according to a release from the NCAA Division I Council. Coaches and staffers, of course, are also banned from gambling on NCAA sports.

“It’s a sad situation,” Swinney said. “You can’t do it. And you can, but you jeopardize your opportunity to play. So, gotta make the right decisions.”