ESPN analyst tears into 'stupid' Dabo Swinney

If Dabo Swinney has a million haters, Paul Finebaum is one of them. If Clemson’s head coach has one hater, it’s ESPN’s college football personality. If the world is against Swinney, Finebaum’s with the world. If the world is for Swinney, Finebaum is against the world.

Suffice it to say there’s no love lost between the two, and Finebaum has been personally digging Swinney’s grave for the past couple of seasons, just waiting for the castle he built in Upstate South Carolina to crumble.

Despite some lackluster quarterback play, Swinney muscled his team to 10 wins in 2021 and ’22. But there were some cracks in the foundation after his team won nine games in ’23. And now, after a 34-3 loss to Georgia to start ’24, Finebaum is out for blood.

“Sadly, it seems like Dabo, this time, is really done at Clemson,” says Finebaum on Get Up Monday. “We have been writing them off for some time, but they’ve been hanging around. But they were up against the best kid on the block on Saturday, and they got manhandled. There’s nowhere to go for Dabo Swinney. He can complain about the criticism. He can say he’s doing the right thing. But clearly, he has screwed up badly, refusing to go into the portal.”

Booger McFarland and Shannon Sharpe shared Finebaum’s same sentiments over the weekend. Their message(s) basically boiled down to the fact that college football’s elite will leave Clemson in the dust if its head coach won’t adapt. And it sort of already has.

But Joey Galloway pushed back on that idea.

“I’m glad you got me in here before you got to Paul because Paul’s got his shovel out; he’s ready to dig a grave,” said Galloway. “Here’s what I’d like to say: I don’t think we give Dabo the respect he deserves. There are two coaches that are coaching that have two National Championships — only two. If you look at the string of 10 wins seasons he’s had up until last season, where he got to nine, we make it sound like Dabo has been terrible for years.

“Those two National Championships weren’t that long ago. And so, when we talked about Dabo Swinney, all I’m saying is this: can we act like this guy is one of the all-time greats? Because he is. And so, they’re not far off. Hey, Paul, I know what you’re about to do, so I wanted to get in here and just try to give a little positivity…all I’m saying is if Dabo Swinney is a problem, he’s a problem that about 120 schools would love to have right now, that’s because he’s won National Championships. They’re not terrible. Georgia’s gonna make a lot of teams look like this this year.”

Finebaum disagreed with the notion that Swinney would be heavily sought after by Power Four programs in the off chance that Clemson thought it was time to make a head coaching change.

“Joey, I don’t want to dig his grave because I think I’ve already done it a couple of years ago, but the point being, I want to give you one stat,” replied Finebaum. “You can scream and holler if you want, but you said all these other schools that would want to hire Dabo Swinney. I’m gonna cite one example that occurred last January. An opening occurred January 10th at the University of Alabama. Why is that important? Because it’s one of the premier jobs in the country, and Dabo Swinney was not even given an interview.

“By the way, for those that don’t know, Dabo Swinney has a degree, played football, and won a National Championship at Alabama. My point here is that the top schools don’t want anything to do with him for this reason, he will not bend. He can stay at Clemson for a long time, although I hear from Clemson fans they’re frustrated, too. No, they aren’t firing Dabo Swinney, but they’re fed up with his stubbornness. This is about 4 or 5 year old topic, and all he has to do is adjust and that program can return to the top of the ACC. But as long as he is stubborn, they will not return to prominence.”

Marcus Spears chimed in, arguing the same point that Swinney needs to embrace the transfer portal if he wants to remain competitive at the highest level of college football.

“He has to do it if he gonna win championships because the teams that are doing it are winning championships,” said Spears. “Those are the ones that are consistently having success right now. The top teams in the country, I’m sure, transfer portal has been a big part of their program. I understand what Joey is saying; Joey, you’re fighting for coaching acumen. I know what you’re saying about Dabo; I hear you clearly. You’re fighting for his acumen as a coach. We all believe that Dabo can coach, but, Joey, you can coach them little third graders that can’t tie their shoes and spit at the same time, and they gonna get beat to sleep by that young pee-wee football that’s gonna play really good in middle school and high school.

“This is about the players, bro. I say this all the time; I’ve been saying this for years. Every great coach has 4 or 5 of them dudes banners hanging up in their stadiums that was directly tied to what they were doing. For Dabo years ago, it was Trevor Lawrence; it was all of those draft picks. He don’t have them no more. And we know the truth…if you don’t have those guys, you’re not gonna win National Championships. I don’t care how good your Xs and Os are.”

While agreeing with Spears’ assessment that this isn’t an attack on Swinney’s coaching abilities, Finebaum attacked Clemson’s head coach’s methods for getting to where he and his program are today.

“Nobody’s trying to make Dabo out to be terrible, but what he is is stubborn, and I would go so far as to say stupid,” Finebaum later added. “Because if you don’t use the tools you have at your disposal, you’re dumb in today’s world of college football. The problem is, we can’t have a conversation with Dabo Swinney without talking about the past. We’re living in the present and moving toward the future, and I’m around Clemson fans. I don’t live too far from where Clemson University is headquartered, and, quite frankly, those fans are frustrated, too.

“Because they got used to it. They got used to going to six Playoffs and four National Championships. This is a man that beat Nick Saban twice for the title, but that was a couple of years ago. LSU fans are angry today about Brian Kelly, and they won a title in 2019. That’s just not the way college football is.”

[ Awful Announcing ]

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