I normally don’t put any stock in what Paul Finebaum has to say, but the SEC mouthpiece is saying what a lot of us are thinking with regard to the future of Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.
“I was with a bunch of people on shows, and it’s a cliché, but everybody says it, Dabo Swinney hasn’t forgotten how to coach. That is irrelevant to the question. A lot of great coaches are going to fail in this current era. That’s why (Lane) Kiffin’s doing so well. That’s why Dabo is about to be out at Clemson” Finebaum said on his ESPN radio show on Monday.
This was after Finebaum had said earlier in the day, on the ESPN TV talk show “Get Up,” that as far as Clemson Football is concerned:
“It’s over. There’s no turning back. I’m not suggesting he’s going to get fired. Although I would fire him if I were the AD after that.”
That was the 51-10 loss to LSU on Saturday night, in which Kiffin’s side outgained Clemson by 499 yards.
The Clemson-LSU game played more like Virginia Tech-VMI than a battle of two relatively recent CFP teams.
I’d say you heard it here first, but I didn’t suggest, in my Sunday column, in which I focused on how the situation at Clemson could impact UVA Football, that I think Clemson ends up actually firing Dabo Swinney.
ICYMI
My read on what will happen is: Swinney probably already knows that the way the game is played today has passed him by, and sometime around Nov. 1, he will fall on his sword, the way Tony Bennett did at UVA did two years ago.
It’s not just that Clemson can’t afford to fire Swinney – the school would owe him a $57 million buyout – but more, a matter of respect.
Swinney deserves to go out the way he wants to.
That said, there’s no question, out is where things are headed down there.
To his credit, I guess, Swinney, in the here and now, is still treating all of this speculation about his future like the ornery cuss he has come to be the past couple of years, as the reality of the game passing him by has begun to sunk in.
There was an uncomfortably testy exchange at his weekly presser today, which began with a reporter asking Swinney if he had any regrets over how he built his roster – with just 15 transfers, two of whom were walk-ons – relying on his high school recruiting and player development, which obviously isn’t producing.
“No, I don’t, man. I regret being 0-1 right now. I regret that,” Swinney said, before going on the attack, telling the reporter that he knows his role in “this environment” is “to be the guy who wants to create all the controversy and ask the controversial questions.”
He even played the “did you play football” card, which, no, that isn’t at all defensive.
“OK, well, they give you 12 games, and at the end of the year, you count them up. That’s when those types of questions are fair to me, not after one game to maybe the best team in the country,” Swinney said.
“Other people have good teams and coaches and things like that, too, so, I give them credit. We’ve got 11 more games to go battle. We’ll count them up. Then you can ask me whatever question you want,” Swinney said.
Ask him whatever, indeed, after that last of those remaining 11 battles, ahead of the coach pulling out a copy of “The Guy in the Glass.”
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Chris Graham
