Clemson, Dabo Swinney facing turning point ahead of showdown with No. 3 Florida State

Anyone who stayed at Doak Campbell Stadium late into the night on Sept. 20, 2014 could have reasonably wondered whether Clemson would ever have what it took to become a real national power like Florida State. 

The Seminoles, who won the final Bowl Championship Series title a year earlier, had suspended star quarterback Jameis Winston over an incident in the student union when he stood on a table and shouted sexually suggestive obscenities. Clemson had Deshaun Watson, a freshman quarterback everyone was excited about, but was still starting Cole Stoudt. 

After Florida State had embarrassed Clemson 51-14 one year earlier when it seemed like the Tigers were on the verge of something big, this was their opportunity to break the Seminole stranglehold on the ACC. Instead, Clemson missed two field goals, fumbled at FSU’s 18-yard line with 1:36 remaining and suffered one of the most frustrating overtime losses imaginable.

What was it going to take for Clemson to finally win the game that was their gateway to prominence? As it turned out, just one more year. Florida State hasn't beaten Clemson since. 

All college football rivalries have turning points, and it feels like Clemson-Florida State has arrived at another one of those moments. The question is whether Saturday looks more like 2015 when Clemson finally broke through or 2014 when the wounded incumbent finds just enough to hold on for one more year until the balance of power officially shifts. 

“This is Clemson-Florida State at its best right here, for sure,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said this week.

After that night in Tallahassee nine years ago, the two programs went in markedly different directions — Clemson, ultimately, to the top of college football with national titles in 2016 and 2018, while Florida State sunk to mediocrity through the last years of Jimbo Fisher and the mistake of replacing him with Willie Taggart.

For Clemson, that era already seems over. While still a Top 25 program, they were not one of the nation’s elite teams in 2021 or 2022 and began 2023 with a three-touchdown loss at Duke. The decline is evident, and the sample size is no longer small. 

Swinney has been able to somewhat fight the narrative that he’s too stubborn to adapt to college football’s transfer portal/name, image and likeness environment because Clemson’s power has not completely collapsed. They’re still the kings of the ACC, for now, which theoretically gives them a path to the College Football Playoff. 

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But if Clemson loses Saturday, that goes away — maybe for a long time — and Swinney wakes up Sunday with a completely new problem. Do you rebuild a home piece by piece or knocking it to the ground and starting over? 

The 2021 season, when Clemson lost road games at North Carolina State and Pittsburgh, were little cracks in the siding. Getting swamped by Notre Dame last November when they were 8-0 and on track for the College Football Playoff was a hole in the roof. Losing at home to South Carolina for the first time since 2013 knocked out a few windows. A loss to Florida State might start to affect the foundation.

As successful as Swinney has been he’s also very stubborn, which does not necessarily serve him well at this particular moment when his program is looking a bit stale. Being slow to get into the NIL game and almost refusing to recruit out of the transfer portal entirely has left Clemson under-talented at positions like wide receiver that used to be a pipeline to the NFL, and the quarterback decisions since Watson and Trevor Lawrence haven’t worked out as expected. 

If you contrast this with what’s going on at Florida State, where leading rusher Trey Benson and leading receivers Keon Coleman and Johnny Wilson are among several pieces Mike Norvell took out of the transfer portal and beat LSU in the season opener, it looks like college football’s version of iPhone vs BlackBerry.

But there’s no reason Clemson should allow itself to be a program of the past because just a decade ago, Swinney was on the cutting edge of everything. Clemson was running a boutique  offense that people couldn’t stop. It was paying assistant coaches crazy money to stay rather than taking mediocre head coaching jobs. It was investing heavily in facilities that had flashy new amenities like a nap room and mini-golf. 

And, of course, it kept shoveling more money to Swinney, even though there was no real threat that he was going to leave one of the sport’s best coaching situations. Swinney is now under contract through 2031 for $11.5 million annually with the school owing $64 million if he was fired after this season. 

Obviously, that's not going to happen. As antsy as the fan base might be now, Swinney has a few more years of runway before things really get serious.

But everything that becomes of his program over that time, for better or worse, belongs to him. Swinney has a saying, “Best is the standard,” that is plastered all over everything at Clemson. We have seen Clemson at its best, and what’s been going on lately absolutely does not live up to that. 

Clemson may not be a place like Ohio State where you can run it on automatic pilot and still contend for national titles, but Swinney is in a unique position. The school has given him every resource he could have asked for. He’s pretty much an icon of the sport, with enough reach to go recruit in any living room in the country. If it’s not working, it's only because he made the wrong choices. 

Swinney has met all of these setbacks by saying, essentially, that everything's fine. But people do not like being told that when their own eyes see something quite different.

When Clemson lost that Florida State game in 2014, it was undoubtedly heartbreaking but there was no doubt within their organization that they were very close and better days were ahead. That chapter lasted nine years. We’ll find out Saturday if it can hang on for one more.