SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — If he sounds a little corny it’s because … well, dad-gummit, Dabo Swinney is cornier than the corniest corn dog at any county fair you’ll ever attend. He’s cornier than the whole cob. He’s cornier than the whole box of corn flakes.
Fun Fact I: Clemson football players are allowed to use (or, more accurately, are allowed to be caught using) only three curse words: ass, damn and hell. Why those three? Because they’re all found in the Bible.
If he sounds a little crazy? Well, let’s face it: Dabo Swinney envisioned all of what has happened at Clemson before it ever actually happened at Clemson. He was a midseason replacement, an alleged placeholder, an interim until suddenly, one day, he wasn’t. In his third season on the job, 2010, the Tigers went 6-7 and lost in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Alabama won its first national title under Nick Saban a year earlier. They won the next two after that. Clemson didn’t belong in the same sentence as Alabama then. And yet.
“I believe what I believe,” Swinney said in 2012, “and what I believe is, we’re gonna be one of the best teams in the country year after year. And if you don’t believe that of yourself, why is anyone else going to believe it for you?”
That also happened to be the first year the Tigers under Swinney snuck into the final top 10, going 11-2, sneaking their way to No. 9 when they defeated mighty LSU out of the Southeastern Conference 25-24 in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. And it happened to be the fifth straight year when Swinney’s recruiting classes were consensus top-five, too.
Maybe the rest of the sport still thought the man with the funny voice was crazy, but the nation’s top players sure didn’t think so. They flocked to play for him. And in January 2017, that resulted in an honest-to-God, no-kidding national championship, capping a 14-1 season, Clemson beating mighty Bama when Deshaun Watson found Hunter Renfrow on a 2-yard scoring play with 1 second left for a 35-31 win.
Last year, they won another, and that one capped a 15-0 masterpiece of a season. This time, they didn’t just beat Alabama, they trucked the Tide 44-16, dominating in every way, in every phase. They enter Saturday’s Fiesta Bowl at State Farm Stadium on a 28-game winning streak. Swinney’s crazy vision has become a reality. They are the gold standard in college football.
So here’s a question for you:
Why doesn’t it feel that way?
Swinney himself addressed this issue a few months ago, and he was roundly lampooned for it. And, yes, he did go a little zany with his thoughts and his theories. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
“We got to go 30-0, we ain’t got no choice,” Swinney said. “We don’t play nobody. That’s what everyone says.”
There was more. Before Clemson’s regular-season finale against bitter in-state rival South Carolina (of the mighty SEC, naturally), Swinney said this of the College Football Playoff: “It’s huge from a national standpoint, because if we lose this game, they’re going to kick us out. They don’t want us in there anyway.”
And: “If Georgia loses to this very same team, the very next day, it’s, ‘How do we keep Georgia in it?’ We win to the team that beat South Carolina and it’s, ‘How do we get Clemson out?’ It’s the dad-gummest thing. It’s big, because they can’t vote us out.”
Fun Fact II: Clemson batters the Gamecocks 38-3 and turns Virginia into a grease spot on the ACC Championship, 62-17. During their winning streak, the average score looks like this: Clemson 45, Other Guys 12. Last year they won their two playoff games, against Notre Dame and Alabama, by a combined 74-19. There’s nothing flukish about any of that.
Maybe Swinney went a bit too far with all of that. But did he really? The Tigers are around a 2-point favorite to beat Ohio State on Saturday, but it seems like wave after wave of prognosticator and pigskin prophet is grabbing the Buckeyes and the points. And even if Clemson survives this, there is already a sense that playing LSU in New Orleans would be an impossible mountain to climb.
And maybe it would be for a lot of teams. But Clemson isn’t all that far removed from 6-7. The Tigers aren’t that far removed from “Dabo Who?” and from the gales of laughter that met all of Dabo Who’s plans of grandeur. Oh, and another thing? They’re the defending national champs until someone says otherwise. That one’s easy to forget sometimes.