Brandon Walker isn’t ready to walk away from Dabo Swinney, and that says plenty about how Clemson still lives in people’s heads.
The Barstool Sports college football analyst said he can’t fully quit believing Swinney can still put together a great team, even if the present-day evidence is hard to lean on.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever quit [on] Dabo as far as believing in his ability to have a good team, even though he is really wringing out the sponge as far as the believability of that actually happening,” Walker said. “He’s not giving us anything to hang on to as far as present day, but I still have the memories, man. I still have to believe it’s in there somewhere.”
That’s the tension around Clemson right now. Swinney’s peak wasn’t all that long ago, and the memory of what he built still carries real weight.
Clemson made the College Football Playoff two years ago as ACC champions, and the Tigers are again being mentioned among the teams with a path to the ACC title game in Charlotte this December. Win the ACC, and a playoff spot follows.
But the recent stretch has been far less comfortable for believers. Clemson has slid from the standard Swinney created, and the last five years or so have made the program look a lot more ordinary than it once did. The Tigers are no longer an annual playoff fixture, even with the field expanded.
That’s what makes this season feel important. Clemson is coming off its worst year in well over a decade, and everyone around the program appears to understand the need to turn it back around. Swinney is part of that push, especially with criticism around him growing louder.
Still, he has never completely lost the trust of his people. Swinney continues to land the kind of players Clemson wants out of high school, and the program has also started dipping into the transfer portal more often.
Former coaches and players still come back and fight for the Clemson cause, and underused players have stayed put instead of transferring. That kind of loyalty doesn’t disappear just because the results have dipped.
The standard Swinney set is also part of why the expectations remain so high. When he took over after Tommy Bowden, he changed what Clemson was supposed to be.
Under Swinney, being merely good stopped being enough. Greatness became the bar.
Now the question is whether this team can give his believers enough to hold onto. Walker’s view makes the challenge pretty clear: Clemson needs a 10-win season and a real shot at the ACC Championship Game to keep the doubters from taking over the conversation. Whether the Tigers get to Charlotte, win there, or end up watching Miami play instead, they need to stay in that mix.
Because as rough as things have looked at times, quitting on Dabo Swinney has never been simple. Every time people start to move on, Clemson tends to find a way back into the picture.
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