Why Dabo Swinney is too low on College Sports Wire’s top 12 coaches for the 2024 college football season
The Dabo Swinney disrespect continues to mount after another season where the Clemson football program failed to make the college football playoff.
Swinney is one of the most polarizing figures in college football for a reason, for a lot of good and what some perceive to be negatives. Opinions are opinions, and people have many of them.
Recently, College Sports Wire’s Patrick Conn ranked the top 12 head coaches in college football, with Swinney falling to No. 6. While I know Patrick as an excellent football mind and writer, I’m here to tell you why he’s wrong.
There has been a bit of a fall from grace for Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers. Swinney was once viewed as the second-best head coach in college football behind Nick Saban. He has since been passed by Smart. Still Swinney is one of two active head coaches with multiple national championships, it is him and Kirby Smart. Quite an impressive list to be a part of. To climb back to the top of this list, Swinney needs to get back to the CFP after missing out each of the last three seasons.
From a criteria standpoint, I get it. The criteria he chose was on field performance, high school recruiting and transfer portal recruiting. Based on that criteria, sure Swinney may be lower… but I don’t believe that criteria is the best way to analyze a coach.
Personally, I do feel history matters a lot more than is being taken into account here. Let’s look at Swinney’s resume: A 170-43 record as a head coach, two National Championships wins, both coming against Nick Saban and Alabama, along with his eight ACC Championships. Pretty dang good if you ask me.
Sure, Clemson has been down in recent years, but to have down years of 10 wins, 10 wins, and 9 wins are some down years programs dream to have. I get knocking Swinney for the transfer portal stuff, but history matters, and it’s not like the Tigers have been drowning (even if people want you to believe that).
Again, I get Conn‘s process here; I simply disagree with it. My biggest gripe is some of the names I see ahead of Swinney. One, in particular, is Ohio State head coach Ryan Day.
At a program such as Ohio State, this criteria is tailored to pretty much whatever coach is there. They will always be the top tier of recruiting, with nearly anyone at the helm. So, they recruit well and hit the transfer portal hard, but what about actual success in the field?
I’ve said this before, so you may remember it, but Ryan Day was handed the keys to a Ferrari and has driven it like a Chevy Impala. Ohio State enters each season with him at the helm with arguably the best roster in college football, yet they haven’t won the Big Ten since 2020. There is no way you’ll tell me Day is a better coach than Swinney!
Was this, in a way, a rant? Completely, but it felt necessary. Swinney is absolutely a top 5 head coach in college football.
