Dabo Swinney thanks Colin Cowherd for calling Clemson a fraud in 2017: ‘We had fun at your expense’

Dabo Swinney and Colin Cowherd have a good laugh years after they called each other frauds.

Clemson football head coach Dabo Swinney recently appeared on The Colin Cowherd Podcast, discussing all sorts of topics, including the infamous incident when they called each other frauds.

Ahead of the 2017 National Championship Game vs. the Alabama Crimson Tide, Cowherd had no belief Clemson would win the national title, claiming they were frauds. Not knowing who Cowherd was at all, Swinney returned the favor and called Cowherd “a fraud”. The Tigers would win their first national title since 1981 that season. Clemson has since become a national power.

“I did not know who you were to be honest with you; I really didn’t,” said Swinney to Cowherd. “That’s how I found out who you were, somebody sent me your clip. I think you called us a fraud or something.”

“I’m like, ‘Who the heck is this guy?’ I didn’t know he was, but I had a lot of fun with our team. We were getting ready to play Alabama, and I said, “Hey boys, just get me to the press conference, just give me there, and we’ll have some fun with this. So, to be honest with you, I had forgotten about it, and, you know, you just won a national championship, you got a lot going on. And one of the players reminded me, ‘Hey, don’t forget about that. I’m like, ‘Oh no that’s right!’

“We had a little fun at your expense.”

Dabo Swinney, Clemson football had fun at Colin Cowherd’s expense in 2017

Since Cowherd and Swinney called each other frauds over four years ago, Clemson has won the ACC every year, made the College Football Playoff every season, played for three national titles and won two of them to cap off the 2016 and 2018 college football seasons. The only great thing that has not happened for Clemson under Swinney just yet is to have a Heisman Trophy winner.

“No, I love it. It’s so funny,” said Cowherd to Swinney. “So you won, I went to bed because I have to get up early. So, I didn’t see postgame. So, I come in for my prep— the prep starts about 5:50 am, at 7:27 am all the guys look at me and they go, ‘Well, aren’t you going to talk about what Dabo said?’ and I said, ‘What the hell did Dabo say? What are you talking about?’ and they played it, and I went, ‘Guys… this is the lead to the show. What have we been doing for two hours?’ And by the way, we loved it.”

“I mean I went on here and I’m like, ‘You know what, I own it.’ It’s funny, I watched you twice, early, and you struggled a little bit offensively. I think it was, you couldn’t put away NC State and I said, ‘How did these guys get…?’ But it was classic. I saw you early, and I didn’t catch you late, and boy, by the time, you know, that was a team that got much better in the last six weeks of the season. We loved it. I had a ball with it.”

It is great to see Cowherd and Swinney laugh about the infamous fraud controversy years later.

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