By Mark Neel
William Christopher “Dabo” Swinney became coach of the Clemson Tigers seven games into the 2008 season following the resignation of Tommy Bowden. It took Swinney a little over two years to find his footing, but from 2011 – 2020 the Tigers earned a bid to a major bowl game every year except one. Clemson’s record in those ten years was 121 – 18. The Tigers won the ACC championship every year from 2015 – 2020 and won national championships in 2016 and 2018. They were inarguably the cream of the crop in the ACC for the better part of a decade.
But for the last three seasons, Coach Swinney’s Tigers have truly fallen on hard times, posting a very pedestrian record of 30-10. Oh, the weeping and gnashing of teeth over records of 10-3, 11-3, and 9-4 can be heard far and wide from the Clemson faithful. There have been fan uprisings where Swinney was hung in effigy and his likeness tossed into bonfires.
Now, none of what you just read in the preceding paragraph is true, except for the team’s record. But when you’ve fallen in love with winning championships and top-five rankings every year, breaking up is hard to do. There will always be calls for the coach’s head from the less-than-knowledgeable fans who only jumped on the bandwagon 10 minutes ago, but any true Tiger fan knows what they have.
But is it okay to be okay with three and four losses a year when you’ve been to the mountaintop only recently? Will the Tigers come roaring back from three, according to their standard, subpar seasons? They absolutely can, and probably very soon.
More Sports News
The key, as it is with most teams, is the quarterback play. Junior Cade Klubnik is expected to be the starter. His backups are young and inexperienced. Klubnik will have to be more efficient with the ball and rein in some of his gunslinger attributes while remaining aggressive, no small task. If he can become the star he was destined to be out of high school, the Tigers can push their way back to the top of the conference and set the stage for a return to competing for championships on the national stage. Success begets success, and quarterback recruits want to come to a place where there is a history of greatness at the position, as there is at Clemson.
Speaking of recruiting, have the Tigers and Coach Swinney recruited well enough recently to support their return to prominence? According to Mike Farrell, Clemson had the No. 9 class in 2023. “Clemson always has a class outside the top five that seems exceptional, and this year is no different. Dabo killed it in Alabama and Georgia as usual.”
This speaks to the player development that has been a hallmark of the program. But the fact is, Clemson’s ranking in the recruiting wars has fallen off in recent years, coming in at No. 14 and No. 11 the last two years according to the On3 industry composite. Does Dabo have the wherewithal to reignite the program’s recruiting prowess? The answer to that question will certainly be a major factor in Clemson’s ability to return to the elite.
One other note regarding recruiting – the Tigers have lost 12 players to the transfer portal in each of the last two years but have had a hard time enticing players out of the portal. He has remained staunchly against the use of the portal, as evidenced by being the only team outside of the service academies to add any players.
So besides a history of great quarterback play, the need for it in 2024, and getting back to a prominent role in the recruiting rankings, what do the Tigers have going for them that may push them back to the top? Most programs claim to have it, but by almost all accounts, Clemson has one of the best. What is it? The culture. “Best is the standard” is how the program is run. Seldom a discouraging word is heard from those within the program and those who have passed through about the way Dabo treats the members of his program and the family atmosphere he encourages.
After all is said and done, the factors that will determine your ability to get to and stay at a championship level are sometimes out of your control. The changing landscape of college football means that what worked even five years ago may no longer work. As a coach, can you adapt yourself and your program to the New World Order? Will you be vacuumed up by the rapid change of the sport and decide to leave it the way coaches such as Saban and Harbaugh have done?
This may be the overriding factor in Clemson’s attempt to return to prominence – what will Dabo do?
