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O’Gara: Dabo Swinney’s transfer portal comment was cringe, but not as cringe as his remaining contract
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Dabo Swinney made us all collectively cringe yet again.
At the ACC Meetings on ACC PM, Swinney couldn’t simply answer a question about being the only non-service academy to not add a player in the transfer portal. Instead, he had to put that Swinney stench all over it.
“Every player is technically a transfer,” Swinney said. “We just signed a whole class of guys transferring from high school.”
Dabo Swinney asked on ACC PM about Clemson being the only non-service academy to take zero transfers for 2024. Says it wasn’t intentional, they looked at a few guys. Also: “Every player is technically a transfer. We just signed a whole class of guys transferring from high school” pic.twitter.com/DeDbSDUBcC
— Chapel Fowler (@chapelfowler) May 15, 2024
Even for Swinney, that’s cringe.
It’s cringe because he’s on the heels of Clemson’s worst season in 9 years, and unlike the disappointing 2022 season when Swinney still led an 8-0 conference mark, the Tigers faded into mediocrity with a 4-4 mark in ACC play. Swinney fired his offensive line and defensive line coach, yet making personnel moves beyond that wasn’t in the cards.
At this point, it’s not news when Swinney makes a cringe, refusing-to-adapt comment about the nature of the sport. Well, Clemson did, as Swinney said, “look at a few guys.” Clearly, it didn’t look at many and whatever pitch was made wasn’t enough.
Jimbo Fisher was another national championship-winning coach who refused to adapt until it was too late. By the time he brought in his own offensive play-caller and actually made some improvements on that side of the ball, the wheels were in motion for A&M to agree to pay a historic $76 million buyout. It blew Gus Malzahn’s $21.5 million buyout out of the water for the richest buyout paid in the sport’s history.
Swinney’s job isn’t in jeopardy in 2024 or even in 2025. If you think 1 ring gives you a long leash, try 2. Swinney owns 40% of the rings among active FBS coaches (Kirby Smart has 2 and Mack Brown has 1).
But with Fisher’s contract no longer in play, it’s starting to feel like Swinney’s contract is the most cringe in the sport.
If you’re not well-versed in Swinney’s 9-figure deal, fear not. You came to the right place.
In September 2022, Swinney’s 10-year, $115 million became official. That meant his contract averaged $11.5 million from 2022-31. If you can believe it, it was a deal that was just slightly more than Kirby Smart’s 10-year, $112.5 million contract that was announced 2 months earlier in July 2022 (Smart’s new 10-year deal that was just announced earlier in the month pays him an average of $13 million).
In theory, paying an 8-figure annual salary to a coach with multiple rings makes sense. In actuality, having nearly $100 million still committed to a coach coming off his third consecutive finish outside the top 10 of the AP Poll is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when he continues to make cringe comments that highlight his refusal to adapt to the sport.
If Swinney had a flat buyout fee of $15 million, that contract wouldn’t be worth discussing. But it’s nothing close to that. Here are the buyout terms if he’s fired (H/T ESPN):
- 2024: $60 million
- 2025: $60 million
- 2026: $57 million
- 2027-31: Remainder of contract (it starts at $48.8 million in 2027 by my math)
So Swinney could spend another 4 seasons at Clemson and the Tigers would still owe him nearly $50 million if they wanted to fire him. Yikes.
Here’s a question — how many times will Clemson earn a 12-team Playoff berth in the next 4 years? I’d set the over/under at 1.5. If you think that’s too pessimistic, remember that Clemson only earned a New Year’s 6 bowl berth once in the past 3 seasons … and it was a blowout loss against a Hendon Hooker-less Tennessee team.
That’s the issue. Missing the 4-team Playoff is frustrating, especially when it’s a program like Clemson that made the field 6 consecutive years. But missing out on the 12-team Playoff is going to sting much worse for teams like Clemson.
What’s the hope that Swinney can get Clemson back to its 2010’s ways? It certainly isn’t the transfer portal. For all Swinney’s talk about his loyalty to high school recruiting, it’s worth noting that Clemson’s past 3 classes haven’t finished better than 10th.
Plus, we’re now getting into an era in which the ACC’s financial gap between the Big Ten and SEC is about to widen even more. So even if the ACC depth is depleted and Clemson gets into the Playoff, who’s to say it’ll be able to hang with one of those teams? The Tigers’ 2 best non-ACC wins of the past 3 years came at home last year against a Notre Dame team that didn’t play in a New Year’s 6 bowl and the 2021 Cheez-It Bowl against 7-win Iowa State.
That’s the problem.
So much of Swinney’s contract feels like it’s all about past performance. And to be fair, Swinney earned that money. What he didn’t earn was an un-payable buyout that enabled his stubbornness for a decade-plus. That’s the hand that Clemson has, unless Swinney wants to step down before the contract runs out.
Who knows? Maybe Swinney will do that instead of doing this for the rest of the 2020s. Crazier things have happened. The only thing crazier than that would be Swinney becoming the portal king en route to a third ring.
Until that happens, feel free to cringe whenever you think about that contract.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
