Dabo Swinney, Steve Spurrier clash over ... Pluto's status as a planet
Dabo Swinney and Steve Spurrier have taken the Clemson-South Carolina to a new level: that of cosmological debates regarding the planetary status of Pluto.
Swinney started it all. Asked to compare Spurrier to himself, he chose planets as his metaphor:
Dabo Swinney on his relationship with Steve Spurrier: "He's from Pluto, I'm from Mars"
http://t.co/bsopeBy12s pic.twitter.com/pMTfAVYhtD— USA TODAY Sports (@USATODAYsports)
July 22, 2014 Spurrier
came right back at him, calling Swinney out for a perceived lack of knowledge on the most recent trends in astronomical classification:
Steve Spurrier on Dabo Swinney's "He's from Pluto, I'm from Mars" quote: "Dabo still thinks there are 9 planets out there"
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN)
July 22, 2014 The science is on Spurrier's side. Pluto hasn't been a planet since 2006 because it's not large enough to have "cleared the neighborhood" of its orbit. It's so small, in fact, that there are seven moons (including our own) that are bigger than it. Pluto's orbit is also kind of weird, it's really far away from the sun, and we didn't even know it was there until about 1930 or so.
On the other hand, we all grew up with Pluto as a planet, and who is Steve Spurrier to crush our -- and Swinney's -- childhoods like that? All we know is that when we send our first spacecraft there (the New Horizons probe, set to arrive around July 2015), Pluto is going to be super upset with us.