South Carolina Football: Rival head coach keeps throwing his quarterback under the bus

South Carolina football fans and Clemson football fans don’t often have much to agree upon when it comes to the college football season. The bitter rivals are usually at each other’s throats until November when one Palmetto State team earns bragging rights for a year (bragging rights that the Gamecocks currently own after last year’s road win in Memorial Stadium).

Some common ground within the state this season has been disappointment. Both South Carolina football and the Clemson Tigers have underperformed in 2023. The Gamecocks are in danger of not making a bowl game, and the Tigers haven’t been much better.

The rivalry game this November will not be between teams fighting for New Year’s Six Bowl appearances like it was a decade ago. Instead, the game could be about earning bowl eligibility and not losing too much recruiting momentum with a poor season.

The frustration hasn’t only been felt by fans, however. Both Shane Beamer and Dabo Swinney have had unfortunate moments with the media this season as the difficulties of the on-field results have spilled over from time to time.

One of the more recent moments of frustration for Swinney has centered around his starting quarterback.

In Clemson’s overtime loss to the Miami Hurricanes, quarterback Cade Klubnik was stopped on 4th-and-goal from the 1-yard line. On multiple occasions since then, Swinney has thrown his quarterback under the bus when speaking to the media.

After the game, Swinney said that the quarterback didn’t run the play that was called. When asked if the play was an RPO or read option that required the quarterback to decide whether to keep the ball or give it to a teammate, Swinney said that it was “a handoff, 100%” and “I’ve got no answer” for what happened on the field.

Swinney repeated himself multiple times during the press availability, and then the media asked Klubnik his side of the story. The quarterback sheepishly admitted that he was wrong. It was a huge mistake that should have never happened, and it might be the reason Clemson lost the game, but that should have been the end of it, at least publicly.

Instead, Klubnik’s head coach kept talking about his mistake. On Tuesday, Swinney repeated that the final play was supposed to be “a straight handoff, no read, zero read, just give the ball to the back.”

Coach Swinney did tell the media that Clemson has no plans to try another player at quarterback

Swinney’s Tigers will travel to Columbia on November 25th to take on Shane Beamer’s South Carolina football team at Williams-Brice Stadium.