It All Starts With Swinney

Even with all the accolades that have been heaped upon Swinney, he has remained true to himself and that is what makes him special to those coaches who call him “boss.”

CLEMSON — For the Clemson football program, success starts at the top with Dabo Swinney.

 In only 11 seasons at Clemson (10 full seasons), Dabo Swinney has carved his name into that foundation, elevating himself amid a pantheon of Clemson greats by becoming the first coach in program history to lead Clemson to multiple national championships. 

Swinney and Clemson’s 2018 season was one for which statistics and superlatives accumulated in historic fashion. 

The Tigers became the first major college football team in the modern era (and the first since the Penn Quakers in 1897) to finish a season with a 15-0 record. The list of “firsts” was long and distinguished. Clemson became the first ACC program to beat Florida State in four consecutive years, handing the Seminoles their worst home loss in school history. It became the first program to win four consecutive Atlantic Division titles. And with a 42-10 win against Pitt in the ACC Championship Game, the Tigers became the fi rst program to win four consecutive ACC titles outright. Clemson’s 15 wins included a school-record 12 against teams who finished with winning records. 

Clemson won by an average margin of 31.1 points per game, the best in the nation and the second-largest in school history, trailing only a 35.3-point average margin in 1900. Among the seasons it passed was a 30.4-point average margin in 1901, a season in which Clemson won one of its fi ve games by a score of 122-0. Clemson set school records in points (664) and total offense (7,718, also an ACC record). Conversely, the defense held opponents to 13.1 points per game, leading the country in scoring defense for the first time in school history. 

With all of the accolades and accomplishments, it would be easy for Swinney to become arrogant. It would be easy for him to become demanding, temperamental and detached. It would be easy if he weren’t Dabo Swinney. It would be easy if he weren’t at peace with who he is and what he is doing.

“Coach Swinney is the same person when we are winning as when we are losing,” Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott said about his boss. “He is the same man on a Tuesday in the offseason as he is on a Saturday in season. He’s priorities are in line: faith, family, then football, and he’s not going to compromise on that.”

In 11 years (10 full), Swinney has a record of 116-30 in his head coaching career in 11 seasons. In 2017, he became just the fourth Division I coach to total 100 wins in his fi rst 10 years. The others are Bob Stoops, Chris Petersen and Urban Meyer. With his 116 wins, Swinney is already third in ACC history in coaching wins. Bobby Bowden leads the way with 173, while Virginia’s George Welsh ranks second with 136. 

Swinney has 16 wins over SEC teams in his career, most among active non-SEC coaches in that time period. He is 8-1 against the SEC in the last three years. Swinney won 12 coach-of-the-year honors in 2015, two ACC and 10 for national coach-of-the-year. That included national coach-of-the-year by Associated Press, ESPN, Sporting News, Walter Camp Foundation and the American Football Coaches Association. 

Even with all the accolades that have been heaped upon Swinney, he has remained true to himself and that is what makes him special to those coaches who call him “boss.”“We’ve had five years of 10 win teams, of playing the best teams and beating them and Coach Swinney is still making it fun,” former defensive ends coach Marion Hobby said of Swinney. “He’s a family man and what you see from him is what you get. Does that mean that he doesn’t get up tight? No, sometimes the head coach has to coach the coaches — that happens. But it has been fun.

One might think success has Swinney becoming more hands-on or tightening the reins on his coaches. Not so.

If anything Swinney has become increasingly more hands-off, allowing his assistant coaches the freedom to coach their positions.

“He’s not a micromanager,” quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter said. “He hired us to do our jobs. He hired me to be the quarterbacks coach and I’m going to do the best that I can for him. He allows us to do our job and that’s awesome because we are able to have that camaraderie as a staff ... You don’t get that everywhere. There’s a lot of coaches that are micromanagers.”

However, that is not what drew Streeter home to Clemson, where he played quarterback from 1997-99. It was the fact that Swinney is a genuine person who sets an example that makes the other coaches not only want to be around him, they want to be like him.

“Ever since I came on staff for Coach Swinney, you hear all of these things about that he’s a faith and family guy and he’s exactly what everybody says he is. He’s not a fake. He’s very genuine, very enthusiastic, very positive and that penetrates us (as a staff). That’s contagious. When we come into the office and he’s like that — the same guy every day — that encourages us to be like him. That’s No. 1 when you look at him as a person.”