Dabo Swinney is one of the most accomplished coaches in all of college football. That's even with his Clemson Tigers football team currently holding a 4-2 record and seemingly out of College Football Playoff contention already. With Clemson fans now not having to put playoff tickets on their Christmas lists, there is now criticism for Swinney and his team. And Swinney is having no part of it.
On Monday, Swinney addressed what he feels is the current mentality among what he later called, “the other 1.5%” of the Clemson football fan base.
“We're at a point in our time, and I hate that, where people — if you don't go undefeated — people say you're losers. That you're terrible,” Swinney told Tiger Net. “And it's such a terrible mindset. And honestly, maybe we need to lose a few games and lighten up the bandwagon. Sometimes the bandwagon can get a little too full. That's the one good thing about going through a little so-called adversity. You really find out who's with you and who's not, but as far as our program, we may win every one of these games out. We could lose every one of them. We're a really good team that can beat anybody, and we're a team that can lose to anybody, but our program is built to last.”
Swinney followed up those comments on Tuesday with the Greenville News, per Fox News.
“I love our fans. Again, 98.5% of them are amazing. But the other 1.5%, they create a lot of the problems. They're part of the problem, not part of the solution. … I've had plenty of criticism along my way, and it's just part of it. I know what's real and what's not real.”
Dabo Swinney has built Clemson football into proven winner, but…
Since Swinney took over the Clemson football program in 2008, he's 206-165 (.801), with 12 10-win seasons. He's taken the Tigers to six playoff appearances, going 6-4, winning two national championships (2016, 2018). Needless to say, he's turned the Clemson program completely around, changing the old narrative of “Clemsoning” into a completely different meaning than what it used to be.
Swinney deserves all the credit in the world for what he's done for Clemson football, turning it into a powerhouse when it was becoming a bit of a laughingstock, faltering and not living up to expectations year after year. Swinney's one biggest flaw, however, is that he's the most thin-skinned coach in college football and really has been for the longest.
Go back to when he won his first national championship back in 2016. Fox Sports Radio host Colin Cowherd called Swinney and the Tigers a “fraud” earlier that season, claiming that they weren't real contenders.
“The guy that called us a fraud, ask Alabama if we’re a fraud. What’s his name? Colin Cowherd?” Swinney said at the time after the 2016 CFP National Championship, via On3. “Never met him, don’t know him. Ask Alabama if we’re a fraud, ask Ohio State if we’re a fraud, ask Oklahoma if we’re a fraud. The only fraud is that guy because he didn’t do his homework. I hope y’all print that.”
Since that time, Swinney has never been short of his opinions on the state of college football, particularly when it comes to Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal. He has a strong stance on both, mainly that of reservation. For NIL, he remains against it, instead believing in the importance of instilling moral and educational values over player compensation. As for the transfer portal, he's gone out of his way to be exceedingly against it as well, only taking two players since the 2021 rule change.
In 2020 and 2021, the Tigers' football recruiting classes were ranked 3rd and 5th, respectively. The next cycles were ranked 14th and 15th. Currently, the Clemson football team has a composite ranking of 16th class for 2024, per 247Sports.
Clemson hasn't appeared in the playoff since 2019 and has lost two or more games every season since then, including losing three in their last two seasons. They've already lost two games this season, including their season opener at home to Duke, then later to Florida State. They still have the likes of Miami, No. 15 Notre Dame, No. 10 North Carolina, and in-state rival South Carolina remaining.
Clemson football fan base has right to question Dabo Swinney in current CFB landscape
Like how Swinney believes in building his team through the natural means of recruiting, or better said as the good old-fashioned way, that's his mindset overall, and that's why the Clemson fan base is at odds with their beloved head coach. They see everything that's going on around them evolving and yet look at Swinney at a standstill with his arms crossed, coming just short of yelling, “get off my lawn, kid.”
It's true that fan bases can often be fickle, and that a team like Clemson has garnered its fair share of bandwagoners during their impressive run over the last eight seasons. But is there not reason for concern if you're a Clemson fan? Time will surely tell, and Swinney could always come out on the better side of things, proving doubters wrong. But right now, the Clemson football fan base has every right to question his actions.
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