Clemson's Dabo Swinney defends not punishing assistant coach who used racial slur

Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has defended his handling of an incident from 2017 where assistant coach Danny Pearman used a racial slur. According to Swinney, former tight end D.J. Greenlee and Pearman got into an argument on the practice field.

"Me and the coach got into it, and I was speaking with one of my teammates," Greenlee told The State newspaper. "He heard me use the N-word, basically, and basically tried to correct me by saying the N-word back."

Greenlee approached Swinney privately to discuss the occurrence and Swinney says that Pearman was "profusely apologetic." Swinney did not punish his assistant coach and this week, he stood by that decision.

"I would fire a coach immediately if he called a player an N-word. No questions asked," Swinney said. "That did not happen. Absolutely did not happen. It has not happened. Coach Pearman was correcting D.J., and another player was talking to D.J., or D.J. was yelling at the player, and D.J. said something he probably shouldn't have said. He said, 'I blocked the wrong f---ing N-word,' and Coach Pearman thought he was saying it to him, and he's mad, and he reacted, and in correcting him, he repeated the phrase. And [Pearman] said, 'We don't say we blocked the wrong f---ing N-word.' And he repeated it. He shouldn't have done that. There's no excuse for even saying that. But there is a big difference. He did not call someone an N-word."

Swinney made it clear that there was no sort of coverup to protect Pearman. Rather, he believes the situation was handled properly.

"There wasn't anything swept under the rug," Swinney said. "There wasn't some dirty secret. We handled it head-on. Forgiveness and grace is important. It's important for any of us, but I've known Danny Pearman for 30 years, and Danny Pearman is a good man. He's had incredible relationships with his players. This was totally out of character, but we dealt with it, and we moved on. We have great communication within our team, and it was handled."