"focus their efforts and passion on becoming successful in the arena, but rather in the hearts of those who encounter them."

Those folks don't get paid $11m a year. I haven't seen his contact, but I wondered what performance measures speak to relationships and how are they weighted against wins and losses.

I completely agree with you in principle, but this is an exception. He has a contract to excel at winning football games, not having relationships with young men.

To be a legend you have to build a dynasty, and Dabo has not done that. A dynasty is building something that lasts longer than the stretch he had it. He had a chance to do it, and decided he'd go a different path of doing it "his" way; an attempt to keep college football "pure."

You can say what you will about the choice he made. I think it was worth a shot. But it is abundantly clear that experiment has failed. We are never going to sniff at a playoff unless the chips outside of our control fall in our favor, and we have absolutely zero shot at playing in a national championship if the status quo is maintained. Clemson must now choose whether it wants to keep paying him Natty money for a purity culture, or move on from him.

I am 100% okay with Clemson dropping out of whatever you want to call college football today, returning the program back to a non-competitive (amateur) culture closer where we're intentionally not trying to compete with the CFP teams. That would probably be more enjoyable than NILs and transfer portal betrayals. But Dabo would need to take a 60% (at least) paycut for that. And Clemson would have to stop building a sports Mecca around campus. Heck, every new building program on campus would need to hit the brakes. But again, that's fine with me.

What I hate is trying to have it both ways.