College football is in a strange time, with two tremendous coaches leaving their programs this offseason. Alabama head coach Nick Saban is retiring, and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh is leaving and taking an NFL head coaching job with the Los Angeles Chargers.
With both coaches leaving the sport, two new coaches will be ranked inside the Top Five of the best in the sport, but one familiar name has yet to drop off too much, even though he hasn’t won in a while.
Dabo Swinney Is Still Ranked Very High
The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman released his current Top-25 coaches in college football, and of course, Georgia’s Kirby Smart was number one on the list. Still, number two was another two-time National Championship, winning coach in Clemson’s Dabo Swinney.
Swinney was hands-down a Top-Two coach in college football from 2015 to 2020. He helped lead Clemson to six college football playoffs, four National Championships, and two titles, but his last three seasons could have been better.
Clemson has failed to reach the College Football Playoff in the last three seasons, and even though Swinney has won more than ten games in two of the three years, something in the program is no longer clicking between Swinney and the players.
Swinney Failing To Adapt To Change
The 54-year-old head coach has also shown that he can’t adapt to the new days of college football. Swinney has been critical of NIL and has yet to use the transfer portal to bring in players.
The new day of college football is being able to hit home runs in the transfer portal and adapting to the NIL, and Swinney has yet to show he can do that in the last three seasons.
Swinney’s ranking at two is based more on his past actions than his recent ones.
Not to take anything away from Swinney, but his best success as a coach has come with generational quarterbacks like Trevor Lawrence, who was one of the best college quarterbacks we have ever seen and was the first overall pick in 2021, and Deshaun Watson, who was also a first-round pick back in 2017.
Clemson also was able to play in one of the weakest conferences in college football during that run in the ACC, so it’s not Clemson’s fault that other ACC teams couldn’t figure it out, but that is also a reason why they were very successful and able to make six straight College Football Playoffs.
Swinney has also had a lot of turnover at his offensive and defensive coordinator jobs since 2020. Offensive coordinator Tony Elliott took the Virginia head coaching job after the 2020 season, and then one of the best defensive coordinators in the game, Brent Venables, took the Oklahoma head coaching job after the 2021 season.
Swinney made a big splash by hiring former TCU offensive coordinator Garrett Riley last off-season, but the offense was similar to the previous few seasons.
Clemson New Days In College Football
Clemson will enter a new wave of college football this season when the ACC, Big 12, SEC, and Big Ten expand. The SEC and Big Ten are becoming super conferences, with the SEC bringing in Texas and Oklahoma and the Big Ten bringing in UCLA, USC, Washington, and Oregon.
Clemson has seemed like one of these teams that have wanted to jump ship from the ACC and join either the SEC or Big Ten but have yet to be able to make any deal.
Swinney will have a lot on his plate moving forward as a coach with NIL and the transfer portal, and now he is the coach at a school that is not in the Big Ten or SEC.
The good news is the College Football Playoff will be expanding to 12 teams this upcoming season so that Clemson can find their way in. Still, we have seen the disrespect the College Football Playoff Committee gave to an ACC school in Florida State last season when they were undefeated and got left out of the playoff for two one-loss teams.
Winning two National Championships will also be something Swinney will have over a lot of great coaches who have ever coached this sport, but ranking him at number two at the moment seems like a move because he does have two titles.
I would put Alabama’s head coach Kalen DeBoer over him because of how great of an offensive mind he is and how great he did at Washington the past few seasons before getting the Alabama job this winter, and I would even maybe put Clemson’s rival Florida State’s head coach Mike Norvell ahead of him.