Despite playing significant time during the 2018 season, Kelly Bryant was not awarded a championship ring from Clemson football.
According to ESPN, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney elected not to award former quarterback Kelly Bryant with a championship ring because he wasn’t on the team.
“He wasn’t on the team,” He said. “You’ve gotta be on the team to get a ring… I love Kelly and appreciate what he did for us, but he decided to move on.”
Since revealing this, reaction has been divided. Some believe this was the right move by Dabo, citing reasons such as Bryant “quitting” on the team, or Bryant not contributing much to their championship run.
Accusing Bryant of quitting comes with the connotation that he took his ball and went home, bailing on his team because a better player came along. Of course, the reality of the situation is that Bryant had one year of eligibility left, and he made a smart, reasonable decision to preserve that final year. If he was so selfish in his Clemson departure, former teammates wouldn’t be showing up in Columbia to support Bryant during the Missouri spring game.
On Bryant’s contributions, he played in four regular season games. On the surface, the number seems small, but it accounts for a third of the college football regular season. He also threw for 461 yards and rushed for 130 in those four games. Anyone suggesting that Bryant didn’t play a role in this title-winning campaign is ignoring the basic numbers.
Of course, this isn’t the first petty move to come from Dabo’s tenure as the head coach at Clemson. When he won his first championship, reaching the pinnacle of the sport after years of scratching and clawing for respect, his first instinct was to call out a radio host.
As all-time Clemson greats sat next to him, basking in the glory of a championship, Dabo went petty.
He’s gone the petty route already in this offseason. After saying everything Clemson needed to on the field in January, Dabo has taken shots towards the Tide a few times lately, including the latest one this week.
So, it’s not shocking to see Dabo take this route once again. It was disappointing to see Dabo disregard the contributions of a player who gave everything to Clemson for four seasons, but it wasn’t exactly surprising.