Swinney on the future of his Clemson program: "We're not going anywhere"

Dabo Swinney often says the fun is in the winning, and he says there's a lot of fun ahead for the program.

by TigerNet Staff - Mon Sep 11 21:19:08 GMT-04:00 2023

The face of college football has changed quite a bit, and it seems to be turning all the more with the success of some teams in using the transfer portal for instant success.

Sitting at a surprise 1-1 record currently, speculation has abounded over the state of Dabo Swinney's Clemson program, and he answered those fears on his call-in show Monday.

"We’ve got a lot of winning still ahead," Swinney said. "We had the third-winningest decade in the history of college football, last decade. And we’re ahead of pace to that decade. We’re not going anywhere. Now again, if we’re only going to be happy when we win the national championship – a lot of people are going to miss a lot of fun. We’ve won three in 128 years, so we compete and we have to create consistency and have the right things – and then you have to be convicted in who you are."

Swinney addressed criticisms over his use of the transfer portal as well.

"People talk about this portal all the time. I am not – do I prefer the portal? No. Am I opposed to it? No, absolutely not," Swinney said. "And there’s not ever a spot that comes open on our roster over the past year or so that we have not said, ‘Do we take a portal guy?’ Everybody in the room. And to this point, outside of a couple occasions – and that’s another thing, there’s been two or three really great ones that we thought would’ve helped us and guess what, they’ve got to love you too. Just because you want them doesn’t mean they want you. Other guys we’ve evaluated. We like the guys we have here. We have conviction. There’s always going to be criticism, especially when you have success. Which is good. People care, which is fine. I’d have been gone a long time ago if I ran this program the way everyone else wanted me to run it. I wouldn’t be sitting here.

"At the end of the day, you have to have conviction in what you believe as a leader and understand some people are going to like you and some people are not going to like you; some people are going to believe in what you do and some people aren’t. That just comes with it. At the end of the day, you’ve got to do things with how you believe. And we have a process that we believe in."

Swinney says he isn't about chasing trends and he expects a lot of winning ahead for Clemson.

"If I was somewhere else, my process would probably be different, but we have an established culture," Swinney said. "Listen, as a head coach, I’ve seen a lot of so-called hot coaches that are the greatest thing ever and hot teams that have a great moment or a great year and a couple years later they’re long gone. You never hear from them again. We’ve just kept on keeping on around here. So, we know who we are. Again, are we perfect? No. Are we always right? No. Not even close, but I think we’ve demonstrated that we’ve got a clue. I love the people we have.

"When we make a mistake, we try to correct it, but we’re ahead this decade of where we were last decade. We’re going to have another great year. Is this a national championship team? I have no idea. I have no idea. Who knows what’s going to happen? But I know this, we have a great group, and I know this, we’ve got a lot of great years – let’s just see how this decade ends.

"Don’t miss out on all the fun. Again, if it’s just winning the national championship, there’s about 125 years of Clemson football that you’ve been miserable."