Jalen Rose had a strong response on Tuesday to Dabo Swinney’s statement on racial injustice and how he’s handled issues within his program.
The former NBA star and current ESPN analyst wasn’t letting Swinney off the hook with past actions of wearing a “Football Matters” t-shirt last weekend and what he said about players kneeling during the Anthem.
“Dabo has become a habitual line-stepper,” Rose said. “I remember. I was keeping score. He was one of the collegiate coaches that was really outspoken during the Colin Kaepernick knee scenario and made sure he said publicly that any of his players that did that would be punished. He would not allow it. I just saw him recently online with a shirt that said ‘football matters.’ If that isn’t tone-deaf, I don’t know what is. I’m sitting here trying to think of any word he could have put in front of ‘matters’ right now that would not have been tone-deaf. I still can’t come up with one. I’m not going to overreact to an assistant coach, not saying the word to a player, but Dabo.”
Rose indicated that he wanted to see the two-time national champion head coach do more with these issues moving forward.
“It’s already too late,” Rose said. “The cover-up is worse than the crime. It already happened. Anything that gets said from now on is fake, phony. If we can brush it under the rug, we’re going to do it. Guess what they did to us in 2017? Brushing it under the rug. Yes, Dabo has a terrific football program that creates so much equity, finance for the university for the city, stuff like that. But I do remember him being one of those coaches because I was keeping score, that said he would not stand for one of his players taking a knee when Colin Kaepernick was doing it. Now when I see that visual that’s taking place around George Floyd, they mirror one another. Your move, Dabo.”
Swinney has come under fire for a number of reasons recently for his decision to retain assistant coach Danny Pearman after he said the N-word during a practice a few seasons ago as well as a former player stating he said the n-word himself.
Swinney addressed all of those topics in a lengthy 14-minute statement.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NBA stories via Google! Follow Us
