By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The college football season has officially kicked off. I want to discuss Clemson’s head coach, Dabo Swinney. He’s had a lot of success at Clemson but the current era of college football seems to have passed him by.

Clemson traveled to Baton Rouge to face #11 LSU recently. After that performance, LSU looks like the best team in the country. They beat up on the other Tigers, 51-10. This was Clemson’s worst loss since falling 41-0 to Syracuse in the 1996 Gator Bowl

“The best thing about that game is it’s over,” Dabo Swinney said. “Just really poor performance, not what we worked for or expected.”

They played in front of a sellout crowd of 102,000 at Tiger Stadium. The game was delayed almost two hours due to a weather delay.

Clemson did tie the game 3-3 in the first quarter. They briefly looked like they had a chance. LSU finished with 644 yards of offense. Clemson finished with 145 yards.

That led to LSU head coach Lane Kiffin taking shots at Clemson. “I didn’t expect their offense to be that dysfunctional,” Kiffin said after the game. “Our [scout] team scored more than they did against us.”

“We got our asses kicked,” Swinney said. “We gotta go win next week. It’s an embarrassing performance, coaching and playing. We’re going to have to own that. We can’t let that lead to another loss.”

LSU rushed for 309 yards. RB Dilin Jones, who transferred from Wisconsin, rushed for 113 yards and two touchdowns. Arizona State transfer QB, Sam Leavitt, rushed for 113 yards and two scores. He also passed for 230 yards and a TD.

“You’re not going to win if you can’t stop the run,” Swinney added. “We just did a really poor job of setting the edge, especially versus the quarterback run, which really killed us.”

The Tigers (Clemson) struggled so much on offense they pulled starting QB Christopher Vizzina out of the game for freshman Tait Reynolds late in the second quarter.

“The start of the game was great for us, but we couldn’t truly capitalize on it,” Vizzina said, referring to his offense’s stumbles. “We’re not helping our defense at all.”

I have to start with the good things Swinney has done. He took over as the interim head coach in 2008. Since then, he’s gone 187-55, which includes two national championships in 2016 and 2018. He turned the Tigers into an elite program.

He’s competing against what he’s previously done. In the new era of college football, which includes NIL and the transfer portal, he’s been slow to adapt. He went several years without having a player transfer to Clemson.

He’s been adamant that he only wants to build his team through high school recruiting. That blueprint worked about 8-10 years ago.

They have been on a steady decline. After 12 consecutive seasons with double digit wins, they were 9-4 in 2023. They did bounce back in 2024, going 10-4 and making the College Football Playoff.

That season started with a 34-3 loss to #1 Georgia. That showed the talent gap between the Tigers and an elite program. #5 Texas beat them in the CFP 38-24 and the final score makes the game seem closer than what it was.

Last season the Tigers started the season ranked #4 in the AP poll. They returned senior QB Cade Klubnik and several starters from the previous year. They went 7-6, with one of the losses in the Pinstripe Bowl to Penn State.

The next game is against Georgia Southern. I think this will be another long season.