Dabo’s stint takes Tigers from mediocrity to elite

At the time Clemson hired Dabo Swinney to be its interim head football coach in 2008, it was a program stuck in mediocrity.

In the seven years since Clemson promoted it former wide receivers coach with no prior head coaching experience, Swinney has built it into one of the most consistent winners in college football.

From 1991 to 2010, Clemson never won more than nine games in a season. While Clemson never finished a season with a losing record during Tommy Bowden’s run as head coach from 1999 until his 2008 resignation, the Tigers never put together enough wins to make a run at an Atlantic Coast Conference title.

Since 2010 – Swinney’s second full season as head coach, which Clemson finished with a losing record of 6-7 – the Tigers have strung together five consecutive seasons with about 10 wins.

This year, as the only team with a 13-0 record, Swinney’s Tigers are headed to the College Football Playoff – where they will play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 31 – and in position to compete for what would be the second national championship in school history.

Having Clemson in that position this year is not simply a result of what Swinney has done in 2015, but a product of the work he has put into building the program over the past seven years.

“Seven years ago when I got this job, the biggest goal for me was just to become a consistent program,” Swinney said. “It (had) been a long time since Clemson was relevant in that top-10, top-15 area, even though we won a National Championship in 1981. So that really was our goal, and our objective was to build a program, to not take any shortcuts.”

From recruiting talented players to come to Clemson, to keeping players disciplined and on track to graduate once they get to Clemson, Swinney said there are “a lot of ways” in which he and his staff have built a program set up for annual success.

“We’ve been able to become very, very consistent,” Swinney said. “In (2011) when we won the (ACC) for the first time and won 10 games for the first time in 20-something years, that was great, that was a good place to start, but the message then was OK, let’s see if we can kind of keep our head down and go put three, four, five 10-plus-win seasons together and become a consistent program. Because if you can be a consistent top-10, top-15 type program, then you’re going to have those years where you can put it all together, and that’s kind of the way it’s been for us."

Given that, Swinney says Clemson owes its 2015 success not only to the members of this year’s team, but to everyone who has been a part of the program’s rise.

“Lot of hard work by a lot of great coaches and a lot of great young men over the last seven years,” Swinney said. “It’s been a culmination of all of those guys that have helped us build a good foundation that I think can allow us to sustain that type of consistency.”

While Clemson has not won a national championship in 34 years, Swinney said he could envision the Tigers being in this position when he became their coach.

Sophomore quarterback Deshaun Watson, who has also played an integral role in leading the Tigers to 13-0 this season, said it was evident as early as 2011 – three years before he began his collegiate career – that Clemson was on the path toward becoming a championship contender.

“I thought they were one of the best when I committed, and I committed when I was 15 years old,” Watson said. “I could’ve chose anywhere in the country, but I knew Clemson’s time was going to come. Great guys before me helped change it, but I wanted to take it to another level. Now we’ve got the opportunity, so we’ve got to finish it out.”

Swinney said the last seven years have proved to him that “you can come to Clemson and achieve anything.”

“You can come to Clemson and get an education at a top-20 public institution,” Swinney said. “You can come to Clemson and compete for national championships. You can come to Clemson and be the best player at your position. There’s really nothing that you can’t do at Clemson University.”

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 8:18 PM with the headline "Dabo’s stint takes Tigers from mediocrity to elite."