Clemson has emerged as Alabama’s equal on the football field in recent seasons and left every other program in the nation looking up at their success, but is everything on the up and up with Dabo Swinney’s program?

While it must be noted that the NCAA has never called into question how Swinney runs his Clemson program, one interesting quote came out on Thursday during the FBI’s federal court case into the corruption of college sports that does involve the Tigers football program. College basketball is at the center of the FBI’s investigation, with the likes of Arizona coach Sean Miller and LSU coach Will Wade at the forefront of some of the allegations; however, a video wiretap acquired by the FBI was played in court on Thursday that may lead to an inquiry into Clemson’s football program.

According to assistant basketball coach Steve Smith, who has been on Clemson’s basketball staff since 2012, the Tigers were engaged in attempts to pay star basketball recruit Zion Williamson before he signed with Duke. On the video wiretap, Smith was speaking to former agent Christian Dawkins (who has since been found guilty and convicted for his role in paying players) and an undercover FBI agent when he brought up the success of Clemson’s football program.

“That’s why football is so successful, is if you do it and use resources at Clemson, like you can really keep everything tight,” Smith said on the video wiretap, according to Matt Norlander of CBS Sports.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction is to these comments — they could be brushed off as simply hearsay by some, but Smith clearly indicates Clemson’s football success is due to keeping something “tight” in his statement. What exactly that is or if Smith was being truthful in his statement or not remains to be seen.

Here are a few tweets by Norlander in order to help understand how this comment regarding Clemson’s football program came up:

Another video wiretap was played that included Clemson assistant coach Steve Smith talking to Christian Dawkins and an undercover FBI agent about the recruitment and potential payments to be made to Zion Williamson's family. These wiretaps were caught in July of 2017. — Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) April 25, 2019