Clemson coach Dabo Swinney insisted during a press conference this week he did not read many of the blistering comments and articles following the Tigers’ plunge to a 1-2 record for the 2025 season, and that actually was one of the more believable statements he made during the course of a 15-minute soliloquy.
I mean, this is a guy who spent a significant segment of that oratory recounting nearly every season, every won-loss record, every distinction and just about every disappointing or bizarre defeat in his 17 seasons as Tigers head coach and then -- no kidding -- declared:
“My identity is not tied up in a scoreboard.”
Even for a college football coach, that would break the Truth-O-Meter at PolitiFact.
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And yet, the reason he started defending his record in the first place was entirely legitimate. Swinney was made aware of what’s out there not by searching his name on Twitter or reading the Sunday paper but, he says, by thumbing through the litany of we’re-praying-for-you texts in his phone. He knew it was bad following Saturday’s 24-21 loss to ACC rival Georgia Tech. And perhaps no public comment made this more obvious than the words of former Tigers All-American Shaq Lawson, who declared on social media as that game was ending, “We got no dawgs at Clemson.”
The only “fire Dabo” content I could locate came from various fans, frequently nameless, though there were media harangues that went beyond what ordinarily might be aimed toward a coach who has recorded just one season with single-digit wins in 14 years, who has won eight of the past 10 ACC championships and reached the College Football Playoff seven times in the past 10 years. (All of which he cited without checking notes).
With a $60 million buyout, there is no reason to believe his job at Clemson is in any jeopardy, and yet that did not prevent some media professionals and others who follow college football from speculating about his “hot seat” status.
When one involves Kalen DeBoer, a coach with obvious talent but fewer than 20 months and just 16 games on the job, this becomes literally the emptiest form of sports conversation. When it includes Swinney, a coach with this degree of accomplishment, it travels beyond – or, more accurately, below, – the ridiculous.
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Good gracious, we are precisely nine months removed from the Tigers’ most recent ACC title. Clemson was a charter member of the conference, which began competition in 1953, and yet more than 40 percent of its league titles were won by Swinney while coaching the team for just 24 percent of that period.
Swinney isn’t falling short of the standard at Clemson. He invented the standard. His predecessor, Tommy Bowden, did a nice job with the Tigers and never won more than nine games. The two coaches before that, Tommy West and Ken Hatfield, produced one double-digit win season in their combined nine years. Those three held the job from 1990 to 2007 and did not claim a single ACC championship.
Any conversation about Swinney losing his job, even if it comes from Swinney, is farcical.
“Listen, if Clemson’s tired of winning, they can send me on my way,” he said. “But I’m going to go somewhere else and coach. I ain’t going to the beach. Hell, I’m 55. I’ve got a long way to go.”
That’s near to the core of why this whole episode feels satiric. It would be close to impossible for Clemson to find a better head football than Swinney, and we know that for certain because they’ve sponsored the sport since 1902 and only once employed someone who compiled a comparable record. Danny Ford went 96-29-4 in 12 seasons with the Tigers, a .760 winning percentage that included a national championship in 1981 and six ACC titles. Swinney is at .787.
Frank Howard is a beloved legend at Clemson, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame who was in charge of the Tigers for 30 years, but his winning percentage stands at .580.
That’s how hard it is to achieve what Swinney has.
“When you have a lot of success, people want to tear you down,” he said. That’s another of the many inventions he sprinkled into his monologue. Whether one believes it was necessary for him to defend his record, his approach to that exercise included too much that flirted with dishonesty to make it constructive.
But a slow start to the season should not lead to someone at Swinney’s level being compelled to defend his performance or job security. There’s so much about college football that is more compelling than this.