This Dabo Swinney Bashing Over Clemson Football’s 1-3 Start Is Out Of Control

CHARLOTTE, NC – DECEMBER 05: Head coach Dabo Swinney of the Clemson Tigers reacts after a play against the North Carolina Tar Heels during the Atlantic Coast Conference Football Championship at Bank of America Stadium on December 5, 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

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Despite a college football season of horrors for the Clemson Tigers, they will not extend their losing streak from two games to three this weekend.

That’s because they don’t play.

Rimshot.

But seriously, folks.

It’s time for everybody to leave Dabo Swinney and his $11.13 million per year salary alone. Only Georgia’s Kirby Smart ($13.28 million) makes more than Swinney, and they deserve their status as financial kings of their profession.

Only Smart joins Swinney with two national championships among active coaches, and nobody else has more than one.

So all this whining over Swinney these days needs to stop. That’s especially true for those around Clemson, South Carolina, where he is the reason the Tigers became famous in a hurry beyond Howard’s Rock, the other Death Valley and a hill of 30 to 40 degrees inside Memorial Stadium on campus.

Swinney gets it, though.

“We’ll just try to have a great open date and reset our goals,” Swinney told reporters earlier this week, reflecting on the 1-3 start for a supposedly loaded Clemson team ranked in the top six of most preseason polls.

“We have an 8-game season. That’s how we have to look at it. We have a bunch of great people who have worked their tails off. It’s frustrating when you don’t get the results you worked for, but that’s life. Life also is about accountability. My job is to make sure we are better. We have not achieved what we expected to achieve.”

Swinney’s current Tigers have looked pathetic through four games, featuring three brutal losses and the need to rally at home from a 16-3 defict at halftime to the Trojans, not of mighty Southern Cal, but of meek Troy.

Quarterback Cade Klubnik has been nearly the antithesis of the Heisman Trophy candidate he was expected to resemble all season.

Not only that, but both the defensive and offensive lines were projected to join the front seven, secondary, running backs and receivers to operate as units filled with the NFL prospects that NFL scouts swore Clemson had in droves.

Instead, those units have looked overmatched and overrated.

Clemson hasn’t been Clemson this season, but Clemson was Clemson as recently as, oh, let’s see – last season. Way back then, the Tigers reached the College Football Playoff (CFP) for the seventh time during the event’s 11 years of existence.

Only Alabama has made more trips with eight.

Each of Clemson’s CFP appearances came under Swinney, but he continues as one of the favorite targets among head coaches and managers of any sport for getting attacked on social media, through the regular media and elsewhere by members of the Knee Jerk Society of the World.

Here’s the big picture for Clemson football, and it isn’t ancient. The Tigers have won three national championships in football, and unlike the 1981 one, the others happened under Swinney during this century (2016, 2018).

The same goes for Clemson’s nine Atlantic Coast Conference titles during his 17 seasons as its full-time head coach.

Now consider this: Decades ago, Frank Howard was anointed the Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno and Nick Saban of Clemson football. He also took a gift that was a rock from the old Death Valley, located in southeastern California and western Nevada, and he placed the rock at the top of that hill in Memorial Stadium for rubbing by players and coaches before the 1966 season as they raced onto the field.

Suddenly, there was another Death Valley, and with help from that rock (and pretty good players), Howard won 58% of his Clemson games (165-118-12).

Swinney is winning with the Tigers at a 78% (181-50) clip.

There also was Danny Ford, the other Clemson coached hugged by those into orange anything. Ford was the head coach during the program’s first national championship, and in contrast to Swinney’s 78%, he won 76% (96-29-4) of his Clemson games.

Here’s another thing that ranks Swinney above his predecessors with the Tigers: These are the glory days in the pocket book for Clemson football. According to The Greenville News, the program finished 2024 making a $19.4 million profit, which was $9 million more than fiscal year 2023.

The paper added, “Clemson football’s revenue jump came from a boost in contributions. It got $10.1 million in contributions, which was up from the $4.8 million in football-specific contributions the prior fiscal year. Another increase for Clemson was in ticket sales. It made $34.5 million this fiscal year, an increase from last year’s $27.8 million.”

So why again do folks want Swinney gone from Clemson?

Oh, that 1-3 start.

It included last week, when the Tigers were flattened at home 34-21 by an unranked Syracuse team, and Swinney fought back sobs on national television afterward during the playing of Clemson’s alma mater.

“My buddy Dabo lost again,” Steve Spurrier said during a recent edition of the Another Dooley Noted Podcast. Spurrier coached Florida to a national championship before he took over South Carolina, Clemson’s biggest rival.

Spurrier added of the Tigers, “They’re having all kinds of issues up there, but they’ll be alright. They’ve won enough to have a bad year every now and then.”

Yeah, that sounds about right.