Before kickoff at home games, the Clemson football team participates in what some have described as “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football.”
In 2016, ESPN’s Chris Fowler was quoted as saying, “If you are lucky enough to ever witness this, you will not forget it. It is perhaps the greatest entrance in sports.”
For the uninitiated, here’s what the spectacle looks like. The birth of this tradition starts like a lot of other college football lore. Many years ago, a team did something, faced a bit of adversity, overcame said adversity and thus a tradition was born.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is no stranger to the power of Howard’s Rock or running down ‘The Hill’. He feels as engrained in those traditions as he does in the football program he put on the map. He’s also won a lot at Clemson. More than the guy they named the supernatural rock after, which says something.
So why is the fifty-four-year-old under the microscope, all of a sudden? And why should he care, especially when the loudest (and most public) critics sound like a guy known only as Tyler from Spartanburg?
The answer is a complicated one, and feels far less cut and dry than other comparable title-winning legacies. Largely, college football coaches are judged by wins and losses. Sometimes there are other things sandwiched in between. One thing they can’t do is spend too much reflecting on what’s in the rear-view mirror.
In the last few years, Swinney has spent a lot of time living in the past. Can he course correct by leaning into the modern methods of college football to push his program–and legacy–forward? Or will his success slowly fade away like landmarks of a bygone era?
Dabo Swinney’s Winning Ways
Dabo Swinney is a masterful program architect, and the numbers back it up. In 16 years at the helm, he’s amassed a staggering 170-43 record, won a pair of national championships and has largely been the boogeyman of the ACC conference during that timeframe.
He and “his kinda guys” have also done an exceptional job on the recruiting trail, especially in the 2010s. Tahj Boyd, Desean Watson and Trevor Lawrence did a whole lot of winning at Clemson, and Swinney certainly deserves a lot of credit for that.
The other element of Swinney that has always amazed and perplexed me is that he’s found a way to be both a media darling and largely disliked by very online college football fans.
Dabo (no need to mention the last name) is always awesome on College Gameday and never shies away from a soundbite. He has a playful side, like the time he promised the entire Clemson campus a giant pizza party after a big win. And all in all, he seems like a relatively nice and decent man.
But see the thing about Dabo is that he’s also like a hill. There are ups and downsides. He’s very in your face about religion, and for some, it can feel off-putting. He’s very stubborn (more on that later). And he loves creating shitty acronyms. None of those things are inherently terrible, but they’re fuel to the flames for people who already have a predisposition about him.
A Bygone Era
Because of when Dabo and Clemson experienced the peak of their success, the college football world saw both the boom and relative bust in a short time. Dabo and his hesitancy to utilize the transfer portal feel like the abandoned malls we still see littered across America.
A few things about the transfer portal. I believe that the transfer portal should be a tool for supplementing an existing roster. Use it to fill in cracks, not build from scratch. An 80/20 or 85/15 split feels about right. Is your team in need of a rent-a-QB? Go to the portal. Did you lose a few defensive linemen or top receivers to the draft? Hit the portal. You catch my drift.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t rely on the portal for more than that. We’ve seen examples of this work well, and fail spectacularly. Colorado loaded up in Deion Sanders’s first year…and well, yeah. Florida State grabbed guys last year and nearly rode it to the CFP. Portal King Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss have loaded up in preparation for the 2024 season. We’ll see if that plan works.
On the flip side, Dabo and the Tigers took a whopping zero transfer players in the 2024 cycle. Zero.
Simply put: Dabo and Clemson’s hesitancy to embrace modern college football and lean into the portal is an outdated mindset, and the Tigers are falling behind because of it.
Dabo’s mindset, like all of those sprawling, artificially lit-up malls, was built for a different time.
Malls were the place to be in the in the 90s. They were community hubs, filled with food, shopping and anything else people might want. That’s the point…a little of everything for everyone.
And no one saw their extinction coming until it happened. The same can be said about Clemson under Dabo.
To be fair to Dabo and Clemson, the Tiger program isn’t bad by any means. Even in what felt like their biggest down year to date in 2023, they still won nine games, including the Gator Bowl. But they are falling behind, and feel far from the peak of their powers.
Dabo’s outdated mindset worked when busy recruiters could focus their energy on high schools and summer camps. That approach was great when four-year commitments were the norm, not the exception. And it was perfect for when players didn’t have a whole lot of rights, opinions or places to share those opinions.
Here we are years later, and dead malls across the United States are being scraped for parts, with cities and companies desperate to turn them into something. Is it possible we say the same thing a decade from now about Clemson?
‘The Hill’
On Saturday, September 7, Clemson fans will pack Memorial Stadium in hopeful anticipation of their first home game of the year. It’s not their first game of the year, however, as the week before they’ll have a date with the No.1 ranked Georgia Bulldogs in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
That coach (Kirby Smart) and that program (the Georgia Death Machine) provide Dabo and Clemson fans with a crystal clear blueprint of how to win the modern game. Recruit your ass off. Acquire other teams’ best players. Stockpile great assistant coaches.
Minutes before kickoff on September 7, Dabo and the Tigers will make the trek from the locker room to the top of ‘The Hill’ overlooking Death Valley. The band will play. The crowd will roar. And the world will, yet again, be treated to “the greatest 25 seconds in college football.”
While we know the outcome of that sacred pre-game ritual, it’s what we don’t know that feels far more interesting. Will Dabo Swinney swallow his pride and embrace the modernity of college football to forgo the fate of malls across America? Or is this ‘The Hill’ he’s chosen to die on?