Paul Finebaum has heard enough from Dabo Swinney, and he made that clear ahead of Clemson’s season opener against LSU.
Swinney tried to light a fire under his 2026 roster this week, calling the Tigers a “bunch of nobodies” while talking about the team’s progress.
“Everybody’s just working,” Swinney said. “We’re just a bunch of nobodies. We’ll see if anybody becomes somebody as we play some games.”
Finebaum wasn’t buying it. On WFNZ’s “Mac & Bone Show,” the ESPN college football analyst blasted the Clemson coach and took aim at the way Swinney has been selling his program.
“He did the stupid typical Dabo ‘that we’re a bunch of nobodies,’” Finebaum said.
That was only the latest shot in a feud that has grown more pointed as Clemson’s national standing has slipped. Finebaum’s criticism goes beyond one offseason quote. He’s been hammering the Tigers’ recent collapse and the gap between Clemson’s reputation and its actual results.
Clemson entered the 2025 season at No. 4 in the Associated Press poll and carried real national title expectations. Instead, the Tigers crashed to a 7-6 finish. Finebaum said that kind of season was hard to square with the talent on the roster.
“Last year, Clemson had arguably the most talented team in the country, and they did nothing with it,” Finebaum said. “They went 7-6. I still can’t quite figure it out.”
That disappointment has only sharpened the pressure on Swinney, whose program once looked almost untouchable. Clemson won national championships after the 2016 and 2018 seasons and made six straight College Football Playoff appearances from 2015 through 2020, sharing the sport’s spotlight with Alabama for years.
But that version of Clemson is long gone. The Tigers have not been back to the national championship game since losing to LSU after the 2019 season. Swinney also took heat for years because he was slow to embrace the transfer portal while other programs used it to reload.
Finebaum said Swinney eventually came around, but only after everyone else had already passed him by.
The analyst’s criticism has turned increasingly personal, too. In July, during an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up,” Finebaum said Swinney was living off old accomplishments and clinging to a version of Clemson that no longer exists.
He even dragged in Swinney’s Raising Cane’s partnership.
“Somebody should dunk him in that Raising Cane’s sauce,” Finebaum said before declaring that Clemson is “not great anymore.”
Finebaum later called Swinney “stuck on stupid” for trying to convince people Clemson is still a nationally relevant force. The tone was sharper than usual, even for Finebaum, and it underscored how much the perception around Clemson has shifted.
Swinney still has the résumé to command respect. He’s 180-52 at Clemson, with eight ACC championships and two national titles. Finebaum’s point, though, is that those trophies can only carry so much weight.
Clemson is being judged on what it is now, not what it was a decade ago. And after a 7-6 season with a roster many believed should have done far more, the Tigers have plenty to prove.
They’ll get their first chance quickly. Clemson opens the 2026 season at No.
11 LSU on Sept. 5, with kickoff set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, according to Clemson’s official schedule.
It will be Clemson’s first trip to Tiger Stadium and its first season opener at an SEC stadium since the Tigers beat Auburn 19-13 to begin the 2016 national championship run. The stage is set for an immediate test.
A win over a ranked SEC opponent would quiet the noise fast and give Swinney a strong answer to Finebaum’s criticism. A loss would do the opposite.
Swinney called his team nobodies. Soon enough, they’ll have a chance to show whether that label still fits.
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The competition has become a real camp storyline because the staff is giving significant first-team run to a trio of newcomers, which says plenty about how unsettled the depth chart still is. For a defense that wants to be ready when the season opener arrives, the next stretch of camp will help determine how quickly the line can settle into place and which young tackles can handle the pressure of playing early. [Read more 🡒]