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Clemson’s Dabo Swinney became a pre-eminent coach without a pedigree
Clemson’s recent growth as a program — after finishing with a losing record in 2010, the Tigers have notched double-digit wins in each of the past five years — has mirrored Swinney’s own evolution as a coach.
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USA Today Sports’ Nicole Auerbach breaks down the Orange Bowl matchup between Oklahoma and Clemson.
USA TODAY Sports
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney looks on during his team’s practice gearing up for the Orange Bowl.
(Photo: AP)
CLEMSON, S.C. — Dabo Swinney jokes that he’s been placed on scholarship twice since leaving his hometown of Pelham, Ala., in the summer of 1989 as a 19-year-old walk-on wide receiver: first at Alabama, where he lettered three times under former Crimson Tide coach Gene Stallings, and then again as Clemson’s head coach in the fall of 2008.
“I was a walk-on player and I’m a walk-on head coach,” Swinney said. “That’s kind of how I look at it.”
Walk-on players — and walk-on coaches — always need a plan. At Alabama, Swinney outlined his journey from walk-on reserve to on-scholarship contributor. At Clemson, Swinney has kept exhaustive and meticulous track of the Tigers’ routine, penciling in activities and markers as much as a year in advance.
As then-Alabama wide receivers coach Tommy Bowden told him, walk-ons have to work twice as hard to crack the rotation — to draw the coaching staff’s attention, which is difficult enough, and to then be picked over a teammate recruited into the program. So Swinney has always worked.
He took from Bowden an attention to detail. Bowden’s father, Bobby, the longtime coach at Florida State, would collect quotes and insight in notebooks, calling this information “the hideaway.” Tommy Bowden did the same; so did Swinney as a wide receiver, and so he does as a head coach.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is helping the Tigers prep for their Orange Bowl clash with Oklahoma.
(Photo: AP)
Bowden’s voice can be found in Swinney’s notes. Same for Stallings, who would hire Swinney as a Crimson Tide graduate assistant following his graduation in 1993. He’s added observations from Woody McCorvey, Homer Smith, Bruce Arians and Mal Moore; from books he’s read; from coaches he’s met; from clinics and conventions he’s attended; from games seen on television; and from college rivals, NFL teams, even high school programs.
Collectively, they form the blueprint for a career defined by Swinney’s tendency to exceed expectations at each and every turn, whether as a player, an assistant coach or a head coach — particularly in the latter role, where he’s gone from Clemson’s interim replacement in the fall of 2008 to one of the leading figures in program history.
“I’ve been around a lot of coaches,” he said. “I’ve only been at two places, but I’ve been at those places for a long time, and exposed to a lot of things. I’ve seen everything.”
Yet as he prepares for the biggest game of his career, an Orange Bowl matchup Thursday against Oklahoma, there remains imbued in his coaching style something wholly unique. Once a walk-on, Swinney has combined the sum of his experiences to craft a self-made road to the top of his profession.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney won the 2015 AP Coach of the Year award.
(Photo: Jim Dedmon, USA TODAY Sports)
“He’s got a lot of characteristics that other coaches simply don’t have, and you can’t manufacture it,” said former Clemson athletics director Terry Don Phillips.
“That’s in your DNA. There’s good coaches out there who don’t quite have those attributes. Not that they’re good coaches, not that they don’t work hard. But great head coaches are great head coaches because they’ve got some personal attributes that some of us don’t have.”
Every coach has a mentor: Alabama’s Nick Saban has Bill Belichick, Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio has Jim Tressel and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops has Kansas State’s Bill Snyder and former Florida coach Steve Spurrier, to name Swinney’s peers in the College Football Playoff.
Swinney doesn’t belong to a distinct coaching tree. In its overall tenor and day-to-day operation, Swinney’s Clemson resembles no other program in college football. As a coach, he has struck his own path to success.
“I’m from the green-plum tree in Pelham, Ala.,” Swinney said. “I’m just a mutt. Heinz 57, that’s what I am.”
***
Phillips saw something special in Swinney, who joined Bowden at Clemson in 2003 after a two-year break from coaching. Swinney had reinitiated contact with his former position coach by sending along his résumé, which Bowden didn’t need; he remembered the “tough guy” who clawed out playing time at Alabama, even holding up Swinney and other walk-on success stories as examples during his coaching career.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney helped steer the Tigers to an undefeated record heading into the College Football Playoff.
(Photo: AP)
Once a defensive tackle at Arkansas and then the defensive line coach at Virginia Tech, Phillips tended to meander toward the defense during his twice-weekly visits to Bowden’s practices. Beginning early in Swinney’s tenure, however, Phillips was drawn toward the offensive side — and the receiver corps in particular.
He would hear how Dabo spoke to his players, how he would balance enthusiasm with accountability in a way that reminded Phillips of a former colleague: Danny Ford, who worked alongside Phillips at Virginia Tech and, as of now, stands as the last Clemson coach to lead the Tigers to the national championship.
He’d walk through Clemson’s football facility and pass by Swinney’s office, which was invariably filled by players — and not just wide receivers but from all positions, from both offense and defense.
“The way he treated kids, the way he coached them, the relationships that he had with them, it became very obvious that Dabo was an individual and a coach that genuinely cared about the kids,” Phillips said.
“There are some coaches that just have that characteristic and that trait — that heart, if you will — and they genuinely care about the players. Danny Ford had it and Dabo Swinney has it.”
Swinney’s connection with the roster played a role in Phillips’ decision to name him as Bowden’s midseason replacement in 2008, and his ability to build similar bonds has been the root cause for the program’s success on the recruiting trail: Clemson has managed top-20 classes throughout Swinney’s tenure, building a talent base matched by only a select few national rivals.
“There’s not an ounce of phoniness in him,” Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. “He’s got his guard down 24-7.”
Yet it was the then-assistant coach’s attention to detail that then, as now, provided the backbone for Swinney’s success. It’s not just the continuous and compulsive compiling of handwritten material; it’s the Tigers’ big-picture view, seen simultaneously in Swinney’s approach to the program’s long-term vision and the minutest of day-to-day details.
There’s a way to practice. There’s a way to treat people. A strategy for today, tomorrow and the next day, and a schedule in place for next week, next month, next year. Venables likened Swinney to Kansas State’s Snyder, who has famously put in 18-hour days — and asked his assistant coaches to do the same — throughout his Hall-of-Fame tenure with the Wildcats.
Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney has guided the Tigers’ offense to 500 points this season, which is already the third-most in school history, and a 25% improvement over last season.
(Photo: Jeff Blake, USA TODAY Sports)
Of course: Swinney’s always had a plan.
“It goes back to when I was a player,” he said. “We’ve got a good plan, but most importantly our players believe in it. That’s something that I’ve developed for years, not just the past seven years.
“I just work hard. I’m not afraid to fail. I don’t know everything, but I’m always trying to learn and get better. I do believe in being very organized. I’ve always been that way. I like structure. I like order. I try to run the program that way.”
***
Clemson’s recent growth as a program — after finishing with a losing record in 2010, the Tigers have notched double-digit wins in each of the past five years — has been mirrored by Swinney’s own evolution as a coach.
This is seen first in the benchmarks passed in each successive season. The 2011 team won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship but was swamped, 70-33, in an embarrassing Orange Bowl loss to West Virginia. The following season ended with a bowl win against LSU, and the next by defeating Ohio State in the Orange Bowl.
Last year’s team snapped the program’s five-year losing streak to South Carolina, and this year’s group passed a final hurdle by defeating divisional rival Florida State.
Clemson has already set a program record for wins in a season this fall, nearing the yardstick set forth by its coaching staff during the preseason: Let’s be the first team to win 15 games in a season, Swinney told the Tigers in August.
Meanwhile, even as he remains “a big gut-instinct guy,” Swinney has tweaked and altered his own approach. He hired Venables away from Oklahoma in 2012, handing over full control of Clemson’s defense. After an uneven stint as the Tigers’ primary offensive play-caller, he turned the offense over to current SMU coach Chad Morris, the architect of the program’s tempo-based scheme.
Follow the road to the 2015 College Football Playoff at The Football Four, our home to rate and debate the nation’s best.
When Morris left last December, Swinney turned the offense over to co-coordinators Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott; Clemson’s 500 points scored already are the third-most in school history, and a 25% improvement over last season.
“You evolve at anything you do,” Swinney said. “I’m pretty settled in with what I believe in, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for next year. There are things you always believe in, but you always kind of challenge them. ‘OK, are we just doing this way to do it or is it the best way?’ Those are things I’m always looking at.”
Once a walk-on, always a walk-on, even as Swinney’s track record has placed him on an elite trajectory. Enthusiastic, even blindingly optimistic, yet dedicated to snap-by-snap accountability. Open and lacking in pretense yet addicted to the details, scheduling and mapping out each day to the smallest step.
“You’ve definitely seen that carry over into his coaching style, his personality, his recruiting philosophy,” Bowden said. “There’s no doubt you see some of those characteristics as a walk-on in his coaching.”
Swinney’s success has simply come in his own way, with a style cribbed partially from others yet totally distinctive in a profession where imitation is encouraged, if not required.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to be who you are,” he said. “You’ve got to have a philosophy that you believe in. I learned that early on. You can learn from others, but you can’t be somebody else. You’ve got to do things your way. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
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