It all stars with Swinney

CLEMSON— For the Clemson Tigers football program, success starts at the top with the head coach Dabo Swinney. Dabo Swinney has been the Clemson head coach for

CLEMSON— For the Clemson Tigers football program, success starts at the top with the head coach Dabo Swinney.

Dabo Swinney has been the Clemson head coach for just nine years, but during that time he has cemented himself as one of the legends of the football program after leading the Tigers to their third national title in 2018.

Swinney enters the 2019 campaign with a winning percentage of .795, the 18th-best among any major college football head coaches in history with at least 10 seasons of head coaching experience. He passed a number of legends in the midst of Clemson’s 15-0 campaign in 2018, including College Football Hall of Famers Bo Schembechler (.775), Bear Bryant (.780) and Henry Williams (.785), as well as Nick Saban (.789), whose Crimson Tide were defeated by Swinney and the Tigers in the College Football Playoff National Championship.

With all of the accolades and accomplishments it would be easy for Swinney to become arrogant. It would be easy for him to become demanding, temperamental and detached. It would be easy if he wasn’t Dabo Swinney. It would be easy if he wasn’t at peace with who he is and what he is doing.

“Coach Swinney is the same person when we are winning as when we are losing,” Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott said about his boss. “He is the same man on a Tuesday in the offseason as he is on a Saturday in season. He’s priorities are in line: faith, family, then football, and he’s not going to compromise on that.”

In 10 years (nine full seasons) as the Tigers’ head coach, Swinney has directed Clemson to a 101-30 overall record (.771, best by a Tiger coach) and 61-16 ACC regular-season mark (.792). He has also led the Tigers to the ACC Championship Game five times, won four ACC titles, won or shared six ACC Atlantic Division titles and won seven bowl games (five against top-10 teams). His teams have compiled 26 wins over ranked teams in his head-coaching career, including 13 over top-10 opponents

From 2011-17, Clemson compiled an 82-15 record, the most wins in a seven-year period in school history. Fifty-three of the victories came against ACC teams. The 2017 seniors had a school and ACC-re- cord 50 wins as well

Even with all the accolades that have been heaped upon Swinney, including being named the recipient of the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award after the Tigers following the Tigers’ magical season, Swinney has remained true to himself and that is what makes him special to those coaches who call him “boss.”

“We’ve had five years of 10 win teams, of playing the best teams and beating them and Coach Swinney is still making it fun,” former defensive ends coach Marion Hobby said of Swinney. “He’s a family man and what you see from him is what you get. Does that mean that he doesn’t get up tight? No, sometimes the head coach has to coach the coaches—that happens. But, it has been fun.

One might think that the success that Swinney has experienced that his laissez faire form of coaching might become increasingly more hands on. Tightening the reigns on his coaches to ensure that they don’t have a life outside of football and that his fingerprints are on every aspect of the football program, but he hasn’t.

If anything Swinney has become increasingly more hand-off allowing his assistant coaches the freedom to coach their positions.

“He’s not a micromanager,” quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter said. ““He hired us to do our jobs. He hired me to be the quarterbacks coach and I’m going to do the best that I can for him. He allows us to do our job and that’s awesome because we are able to have that camaraderie as a staff…you don’t get that everywhere. There’s a lot of coaches that are micromanagers”

However, for Streeter that was not what drew him home to Clemson where he played quarterback from 1997-99. It was the fact that Swinney is a genuine person that sets an example that makes the other coaches not only want to be around him, but they want to be like him.

“Ever since I came on staff for Coach Swinney, you hear all of these things about that he’s a faith and family guy and he’s exactly what everybody says he is. He’s not a fake. He’s very genuine, very enthusiastic, very positive and that penetrates us (as a staff). That’s contagious. When we come into the office and he’s like that—the same guy every day—that encourages us to be like him. That’s No. 1 when you look at him as a person.”