Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney went on a lengthy rant about his football program during this week’s radio appearance.
It all started when a caller had this to say about Swinney: “I know you get a lot of criticism. ‘Oh Dabo’s stubborn, he doesn’t want to go to the portal, this and that.’ He’s not stubborn, he’s principled, and thank God for that.”
That comment inspired Swinney to talk about how he runs his team.
“We have conviction. You are never going to make (everyone happy), there is always going to be criticism, especially when you have success, which is good, because people care, that is fine…. we’re not sitting here today – I would have been long gone, a long time ago, if I ran this program the way everybody else wanted me to run it. I wouldn’t be sitting here,” Swinney said. “At the end of the day you have to have conviction in what you believe in as leader and understand that some people are going to like you and some people are not going to like you and some are going to believe in what you want to do and some aren’t and that just comes with it. But at the end of the day you have to do things with the way you believe and we have a process that we believe in and if I was somewhere else my process would probably be different, but we have an established culture.”
Dabo Swinney rants on transfer portal, conviction, success, future of Clemson football…
“I would have been long gone, a long time ago, if I ran this program the way everybody else wanted me to run it. I wouldn’t be sitting here. At the end of the day you have to have… pic.twitter.com/V1DCvn3XGD
— Clemson247 (@Clemson247) September 12, 2023
Swinney then went on to say that Clemson will continue to be a winning program.
“We have a lot of winning still ahead,” Swinney added. “We had the third-winningest decade in the history of college football last decade and we are ahead of pace (compared to that decade). We’re not going anywhere. We’re gonna win a lot of games. If we are only going to be happy when we win a National Championship, a lot of people are going to miss a lot of fun. We’ve won three in 128 years. We compete and we got to create consistency and we got to have the right things and then you have to be convicted in who you are.”
Swinney’s track record at Clemson has been awfully impressive. He has a 161-40 record with two national championships.
That being said, Clemson hasn’t looked the same the past two years. It’s possible Swinney’s staff is just adjusting to the new state of college football.
Clemson will have a golden opportunity to silence its critics on Sept. 23 when it hosts Florida State.