โWeโve created a monster here,โ former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson said in 2000. โI love that monster because I created it.โ
There was a catch, however. The more years that passed from winning the 1994 national championship, the more it became clear. โYou have to feed the monster,โ he added,โ and we were not feeding the monster.โ
Richardson left Tulsa to take the Arkansas job in 1985 following Eddie Suttonโs departure to Kentucky. In a stretch from 1988-96, the Razorbacks won five regular-season conference titles and three conference tournament titles, reached six Sweet 16s, four Elite Eights, three Final Fours and brought home that national title.
Raucous crowds packed into Barnhill Arena (and Bud Walton Arena, after it was erected) to watch the ferocious Hogs inflict โ40 minutes of hellโ on the often helpless opposition. A monster, indeed: success fueling a tremendous weight of expectation.
Thatโs a burden that Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney is all too familiar with.
The Tigers began the season ranked No. 4 in the AP Poll with a loaded roster headlined by returning quarterback Cade Klubnik. But itโs been the opposite of a September to remember for Clemson thus far.
In the season opener, LSU marched into โDeath Valleyโ โ not the real one, its smaller, quieter imitator โ and knocked off Clemson. In Week 2, the Tigers trailed Troy at halftime before rallying to win. In the ACC opener on Saturday, unranked Georgia Tech upset Clemson on a 55-yard field goal as time expired.
Now with a 1-2 record, the Tigers have tumbled out of the AP Poll altogether. The sledding ainโt gonna get too much easier with No. 7 Florida State, SMU and South Carolina remaining on the slate, either.
Clemson fans arenโt used to this level of losing after winning 12 or more games every year from 2015-19, with two national titles in that stretch. This seasonโs fall has put Swinney into a more defensive mode than usual.
Swinney and Sour
โWeโve won this league eight out of the last 10 years. Is that not good?โ Swinney sniped back at reporters during a Tuesday press conference. โTo go to the playoffs seven out of 10 years, be in four national championships and win it twice? Yeah, weโre a little down right now. Take your shots. Iโve got a long memory. Weโll bounce back.โ
Itโs not the first time Swinney has gone scorched-Earth at the podium in recent years. In 2023, he went on an infamous rant after โTyler from Spartanburgโ criticized him on a radio call-in show in the midst of a 9-4 season.
โI work for the board of trustees, the president and the AD, and if theyโre tired of me leading this program, all they gotta do is let me know,โ he said. โIโll go somewhere else where thereโs an appreciation. I donโt know if itโll be here, but itโll be somewhere.โ
Swinney spent seven years as an assistant at Alabama, his alma mater, before a five-year stint as a Clemson assistant under head coach Tommy Bowden. He became the interim coach after Bowden was fired in 2008, and signed on as the full-time head man heading into the 2009 season.
Swinney brought in Chad Morris to serve as his offensive coordinator from 2011-14, a stretch where the Tigers reached double-digit wins in every season. Dabo was simultaneously establishing the foundation of his own dynasty while filling out the CV of the man who would become historyโs most infamous Razorback-wrecker.
If Swinneyโs personality rubs a lot of folks the wrong way, itโs no wonder Morris โ the man who one reported dubbed the Costco version of Dabo โ flamed out so extraordinarily at Arkansas.
Before Dabo (B.D., if you will), Clemsonโs last 10-win season came in 1990 under Ken Hatfield, who had just left Arkansas. His predecessor, Danny Ford, racked up an impressive 96-29-4 record in 11 years in charge of the Tigers. Ironically, Fordโs next job came when he took over at Arkansas in 1993.
The man who promoted Swinney in the first place was a Razorback, too. Terry Don Phillips, who served as Clemson’s AD from 2002-12, played defensive tackle for Arkansas under Frank Broyles from 1966-69. Phillips also worked under Broyles in the Arkansas athletic department in the role of senior associate AD from 1988-94. After that, he took charge of Oklahoma State for seven years before heading to Clemson. In 2010, Phillips was inducted into the University of Arkansas’ Sports Hall of Honor.
Small world.
Despite the loaded trophy case, some Clemson fans have become frustrated with what they perceive as complacency from Swinney. The Birmingham, Ala., native has been a vocal opponent of NIL and the transfer portal, instead choosing to build his program in โGodโs name, image and likeness.โ Whatever that means.
The Tigers have brought in just five total transfers in the seven years since the portal was introduced. While a bit naive, Swinneyโs dogmatic commitment to talent retention and development is admirable. But when the success starts to dry up, even just a little bit, fans understandably begin to clamor for their head coach to get with the times.
Daboโs Demise?
Yet even in Clemsonโs โdown yearsโ since NIL was introduced in 2021, the Tigers have reached the 10-win threshold in three out of four campaigns, including a CFP berth last season. Dabo may have a point about fans being a little ungrateful.
โListen, if Clemsonโs tired of winning they can send me on my way,โ Swinney said Tuesday. โBut Iโm gonna go somewhere else and coach. I ainโt going to the beach. Hell, Iโm 55. Iโve got a long way to go. Yโall are gonna have to deal with me for a while.โ
If Dabo does end up hitting his boiling point and leaving behind the program he built, he wouldnโt have any shortage of suitors. Fans have already tossed out schools like Virginia Tech and Alabama, where he once walked on as a wide receiver, as landing spots.
Not to be underestimated, it took Arkansas fans only a few hours to conjure up AI images of Swinney in a Razorback hat.
Is Swinney going to leave Clemson? Probably not. And he would never come to Fayetteville, right?
In the case of John Calipari, Arkansas wasnโt afraid to pony up and poach a national champion head coach whose seat was warming up.
Like Swinney, Coach Cal also drew fire at Kentucky for sticking to his old, freshman-centric model of roster-building and refusing to adapt. His last few seasons with the Wildcats, much like Swinneyโs Tigers, were good but not great.
Of course, Swinney is someone the Hogs should pursue the next time they need a football coach, if he even shows a shred of interest. Swinneyโs stubbornness aside, youโd be hard-pressed to find an Arkansas fan who wouldnโt crawl through broken glass to win nine or 10 games every year.
Parallels Between Dabo Swinney and Nolan Richardson
All great coaches struggle like hell to build their programs to the point of monstrous expectations, and then must figure out how to best navigate the inevitable ensuing downward slide.
The results are rarely pretty.
Take Nolan Richardson, who fought a much bigger battle than Swinneyโs current beef with spoiled fans and the transfer portal. The Naismith Hall of Famer faced frequent racial discrimination throughout his tenure, an allegation he levied at the athletic department in a lawsuit after his departure.
โIf they go ahead and pay me my money, they can take my job tomorrow,โ Richardson said toward the end of a challenging 2001-02 season. He was fired days later.
โFor much of his tenure, he was the only African American head coach at a major school in the South,โ wrote Yahooโs Dan Wolken in a 2010 tribute to the โtrailblazingโ Richardson. โHis breakup with Arkansas is so cloaked in racial disagreements that bringing it up still isn’t advised in polite company.โ
Richardsonโs relationship with the university has been on the mend in recent years, thankfully. The 83-year-old still attends games in Bud Walton Arena, as he did when Eric Musselman and his former protegee Mike Anderson were in charge. He was even at Arkansas football coach Sam Pittmanโs radio show at Catfish Hole on Wednesday.
The court in BWA is now aptly named in his honor, as is the street on the south side of the arena. Weโre still waiting on that statue to be commissioned, though. Thereโs little question a statue of Dabo will one day cast a shadow near Clemsonโs stadium, no matter how this turns out. Tiger fans will just have to hope things donโt get messy enough to where that shadow extends over Swinneyโs massive trophy case.
Like Swinney said, he works for the AD, not the fans. But it certainly seems like his patience is wearing thin, and his current predicament bears a stark resemblance to both current and former Head Hogs in basketball.
Prepare for some more low-quality images of Dabo in a Hog hat the next time Clemson drops a game.
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