Inside the winning formula that has Clemson poised for a championship run

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik delights in the fact that he can stroll through the Tigers' grandiose Allen N. Reeves football complex and reel off the names of people he encounters as naturally as he finds open receivers.

Not just the names of teammates and coaches, but also of longtime workers in the Paw Bistro dining hall, equipment managers, recruiting staffers or most anybody with even a remote connection to the program.

In this revolving-door era of college football, dominated by the transfer portal and NIL payments, teams generally need to update the pictures and names on the players' lockers about every six months.

But not at Clemson, which under Dabo Swinney is the unabashed unicorn in this new and evolving landscape.

"You look around, and that's where we're different, not to say we have all the answers and others don't," Klubnik said. "But there's a structure in place here that hasn't changed, and I don't see it ever changing as long as Coach Swinney is here.

"There are probably 350 people that work in this facility, and I could sit down and have lunch with any of them and enjoy it. That's just not the case everywhere, especially now with so many players coming and going."

Over the last few years, some skeptics have proclaimed the game was passing Swinney by, given his reluctance to use the portal and with NIL payments becoming the norm.

Yet as Swinney enters his 17th season as Clemson's coach, he may well have his best team since the Tigers' run from 2015 to 2020, when they played in four national title games and won two championships.

And in large part, the roster has been built through continuity, with Clemson retaining more players over the last four years than any power conference team.

As Swinney proudly says, his program is "built for the chaos" of today's college football world.

"I tell people all the time that playing at Clemson is the closest thing you can get to that feeling of playing on a high school football team, that when you take the field you're playing with the same guys," said Walker Parks, Clemson's sixth-year senior offensive guard. "It makes a difference, man. You grow up with these dudes."

PRIOR TO HIS breakout season a year ago, Klubnik was someone a lot of fans were hoping would be shown the door following a challenging first season as Clemson's starting quarterback. That year, 2023, was the only time in the past 14 seasons the Tigers didn't win at least 10 games, and they had four losses to ACC opponents -- after dropping a total of five conference games in the previous eight seasons.

"I'm the epitome of Coach Swinney's belief in his players and belief that his system works," said Klubnik, who enters his senior season as a Heisman Trophy favorite after accounting for 43 touchdowns a year ago.

"I wasn't very good my sophomore year. A lot of people wanted me out, but Coach Swinney pulled me in his office and said, 'Cade, I believe in you. You're my guy. Let's all get better.' And that's what I heard, not everybody outside saying that I sucked. Most coaches would have been looking for another quarterback in the portal. Not Coach Swinney.

"He brings you to Clemson for a reason."

The Tigers, who open the season at home against LSU on Aug. 30, are an overwhelming favorite to win the ACC, and they check all the main boxes of being a leading national championship contender:

• An experienced, proven quarterback in Klubnik who has all his top wide receivers back. Antonio Williams, T.J. Moore and Bryant Wesco Jr. combined for 161 catches and 21 touchdowns in 2024.

• An offensive line Swinney says is as deep as he has ever had -- "seven legitimate starters" -- and a line laden with seniors and upperclassmen who have played together.

• Multiple future pros on the defensive line, including edge rusher T.J. Parker and tackle Peter Woods, not to mention the top two returning tacklers from a year ago in linebackers Wade Woodaz and Sammy Brown.

• A junior cornerback, Avieon Terrell, whom ESPN analyst Matt Miller has as one of his top cornerback prospects in the 2026 NFL draft.

"The good thing about this team is they've got a good perspective," Swinney said. "They've kind of smelled it and felt it and know what it looks like, and you can't quantify that."

Despite failing to reach the eye-popping standards of their peak, which included a record six straight College Football Playoff appearances, the Tigers are back as a top-5 preseason team brimming with talent, depth and experience, coming off their eighth ACC championship in the past 10 years and seventh playoff appearance overall.

"We're not the SEC, [we're] just hanging around like a hair in a biscuit ... just sort of hanging around," Swinney quipped in his vintage folksy tone.

There's some facetiousness in Swinney's voice as he punches back at the suggestion Clemson has taken a back seat to anyone, not just the SEC powerhouses. (For the record, Swinney is 17-10 against current SEC teams in the CFP era, though the Tigers have lost seven of the last 10.) The Tigers have not had an AP top-10 finish in the past four seasons and have not played for a national title since 2019. They've lost at least three games each of the past four seasons, and even more unforgivable in Clemson's home state, have dropped two of the past three to bitter rival South Carolina -- both at home. That's after winning seven straight in the series.

"Every year is different and every team is different, but if winning a national championship is the only way you've had a good year or you can feel good about yourself or your team or your program -- and we've won three in 130 years -- I mean, there's going to be a lot of miserable years if that's the only way you look at it," Swinney said.

Since the start of the 2020 COVID season, only Georgia (61), Alabama (58), Notre Dame and Ohio State (54 each) have won more games than Clemson who, along with Michigan, has 50 wins during that span. And last year, Swinney joined Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne and Nick Saban as the only coaches in major college football history to engineer at least 14 consecutive seasons with nine or more wins with one program.

"When you look at the history of college football, and we're not a perfect program, but we're a program that I think every year has got a chance," Swinney said.

AS IMPORTANT AS anything to Swinney is that he has held firmly to the values he set for the program when he was named Clemson's coach in 2009 (after serving as the interim during the 2008 season). These values, Swinney says, are intertwined with education, discipline, accountability and family.

"We've just kind of stayed the course and stayed committed to what we believe in, what our purpose is," Swinney said. "We're going to graduate our players. We're going to equip them as men. They're going to have a great experience. I want them to have some fun and I want them to win a championship. That's been our purpose from 16 years ago. My first staff meeting, that's what I talked about."

That message seems to resonate with his team. The Tigers have had just 35 players transfer over the past four years, the fewest among power conference teams, according to SportSource Analytics. For comparison, during those same four years, ACC counterparts North Carolina and Louisville have each had 91 players transfer, Florida State has lost 86 and Miami 82. Among traditional powers in other conferences, USC has lost 87, Alabama 81, LSU 79, Texas 73 and Ohio State 65.

"People hear his sayings and think he's corny, but he's never wrong, at least in the advice he gives us and the way he develops us as men and players," Parks said. "He doesn't give up on you. He wears it like a badge."

Swinney balks at the notion that he has completely spurned the transfer portal and points out the Tigers have brought in transfers three of the past four years (a grand total of five), and three of those were in the most recent winter cycle. Former Purdue defensive end Will Heldt was the big catch and has already drawn rave reviews from teammates since arriving on campus. Heldt and former Alabama linebacker Jeremiah Alexander, who also came in January, are the only two scholarship defensive players Swinney has ever brought in via the portal.

Swinney refers to the portal as a tool to fill unexpected gaps. For example, Heldt became a priority after commitment Bryce Davis flipped to Duke as part of the 2025 signing class and A.J. Hoffler transferred to Georgia Tech following the 2024 season. Hoffler and former safety Andrew Mukuba, who transferred to Texas following the 2023 season, are the only two players Clemson has lost to the portal that Swinney said he genuinely wanted to keep.

Williams, who led Clemson in receiving this past season with 75 catches, 904 yards and 11 touchdowns, said the piece of the puzzle that's often overlooked in Swinney's program is the trust he builds with players.

"He wants to get a kid from high school and develop him," Williams said. "Other people might want [Swinney] to change what he believes in, and if we win the whole thing, then you're not going to be able to tell Coach Swinney anything. On paper, I think we've got the most talent in the country without using the portal, so I think he's doing it the right way."

The numbers, and not just the wins on the field, would suggest as much. Swinney has produced 18 first-round NFL draft picks, the most of any active coach. Swinney is quick to point out Clemson has never had a No. 1-ranked recruiting class on his watch.

"I think we average about 13.6 [in recruiting class rankings] and never had the top class," Swinney said. "Alabama, on the other hand, has been No. 1 in recruiting about every year, and we beat them in two out of three national championships. ... It's not what you were in high school. It's what you do when you get here."

The Tigers also have been a success in the classroom. Clemson recorded a 99% mark in the most recent NCAA Graduation Success Rate data, released this past November, for the 2014-17 period and reached that mark for the second year in a row, tying the highest figure ever recorded among public power conference football programs in the 20 years the NCAA has tracked the metric.

Of the 395 seniors who have finished their careers under Swinney at Clemson, 389 earned their degrees. He has each one of their names on a wall just outside his office. Every player that has signed with Clemson since February 2009 and spent a full four years in the program has won at least one national championship or ACC championship.

"I know our approach is very different and sometimes that can be unsettling, but we've never been in a better spot than we are right now at Clemson," Swinney said. "I'm actually having as much fun as I've ever had."

WHILE SWINNEY AND Clemson seem to revel in being different, others in the coaching world are taking notice.

North Carolina's Bill Belichick, who won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, said last month: "We're all learning from Dabo."

Oklahoma's Brent Venables worked under Swinney for 10 years as defensive coordinator. Venables isn't the least bit surprised that Swinney hasn't wavered in his approach even as the game around him has changed mightily.

"He has this amazing body of work, a Hall of Fame body of work, that resonates with people, and so he has a platform where he's got people listening," Venables said. "There's so much more than what you might see on the surface with him, and when you pull the curtain back, he's as real as it gets. Yeah, he loves to win. He loves to compete. But man, his motives are pure, and that resonates with a lot of really talented people."

Jimbo Fisher, who faced off regularly against Swinney when Fisher was coaching at Florida State, said the retention part of Swinney's approach doesn't get the attention it deserves.

"It's not so much that he's not bringing in a lot of new people. It's more that people aren't leaving," Fisher said. "He sticks with guys, and they know he's going to. Trust me, when that locker room is turning over every year, it's not easy."

Former Clemson coach Danny Ford, who guided the Tigers to their only national title other than the two won by Swinney in 1981, was on campus this spring. He joked that he doesn't know how any coach manages his team in today's game.

"Too wishy-washy, all this back and forth," Ford said. "But Dabo's model hasn't changed and he's still winning."

At times, Swinney has been accused of being too insular in his staff decisions. After all, that's how he got the Clemson job, when he was promoted from receivers coach to interim head coach and then permanent head coach in 2009. But he has broken that mold in recent years.

He fired one of his former players, Thomas Austin, to bring in former Ole Miss head coach Matt Luke as offensive line coach for the 2024 season. Luke came out of retirement to join Swinney's staff after helping lead Georgia to a national title in 2021 as Kirby Smart's offensive line coach. Luke said the only thing that could have lured him back to coaching was the "family environment" Swinney created at Clemson.

Following the 2022 season, Swinney fired Brandon Streeter and brought in Garrett Riley from TCU as the Tigers' offensive coordinator. Streeter played at Clemson and coached under Swinney for eight years but lasted just one full season as offensive coordinator.

And following this past season, Swinney made a change with another longtime staffer, firing Wes Goodwin after three seasons as defensive coordinator. Goodwin was promoted to DC after Venables left for Oklahoma. Swinney had a chance to get veteran Tom Allen away from Penn State, and Allen took the job without ever visiting Clemson.

Swinney also has updated his recruiting operation, following a trend around the sport to make Clemson more like an NFL front office in terms of evaluating personnel. In February, he hired Kevin Kelly from the Los Angeles Chargers, where he worked for 12 years as senior director of college scouting and senior scouting executive. At Clemson, Kelly has the role of director of player evaluation and acquisition and works closely with general manager Jordan Sorrells, who is in his 11th season at Clemson.

And, yes, Clemson has a strong NIL program that Swinney said will be able to compete with anyone. He's just as adamant that the Tigers are all-in with the revenue-sharing model to compensate players, despite his comments in 2014 that he would "go do something else" if it came to paying players and professionalizing college athletics.

Well, players are now being paid directly by schools, and Swinney -- who is the third highest-paid coach nationally at $11.5 million annually -- is still coaching. But he said the part of player compensation he was most resistant to when he made those comments a decade ago was straight pay-for-play to high school recruits and getting totally away from the scholastic model.

"Let them come here and earn it," he said. "With rev share, we get to reward performance and not potential."

There are four players on Clemson's roster -- Klubnik, Parker, Woods and Williams -- making more than $1 million in NIL deals, according to a TigerIllustrated.com report. Klubnik is well above $1 million, especially with his recent partnership with Collegiate Legends, a collectible action figures company.

"It's not an issue in our locker room. Nobody talks about money," Parks said. "What are you going to do, not pay your starting quarterback, one of the best players in the country, what he's worth? Cade could have probably gotten even more money somewhere else, but it gets back to why we all came here."

Swinney insists he was never against players making money through true NIL endorsements and says his stance on players being paid is essentially the same as it was a decade ago.

"This is a place of structure and discipline and accountability. And if you don't want that, you ain't coming here," he said. "We don't outbid people. I don't overpay freshmen. We don't offer scholarships to freshmen and sophomores in high school. You've got to align with who we are. We want to see you first, see you at camp, see you on a visit. We're usually first or second with the fewest offers in the country every year, but we're highest in retention."

Swinney, who went to Alabama as a walk-on wide receiver in 1989, is entering his 23rd season at Clemson after starting out as a receivers coach in 2003. He still goes down the slide from the second-floor football offices to the main floor of the facility before every practice. He typically rides his motorcycle to and from work, and his wife, Kathleen, has been known to ride with him. And even at a "young" 55, for Swinney, his coaching future is what he's going to talk about in the next meeting or work on in the next practice.

For years, Swinney's name was floated as the most likely replacement for Nick Saban when he retired at Alabama. And when Saban stepped down following the 2023 season, he reached out to Swinney. The two have built a friendship over the years and used to own homes near each other in Boca Grande, Florida.

Granted, Saban wasn't doing the hiring for his successor, nor did he want to, and Alabama officials had already zeroed in on Kalen DeBoer and Mike Norvell, but there was an obvious connection between Swinney and his alma mater.

"Nick called me the next morning early, and we had a good conversation about a lot of things, but I'm where I'm supposed to be and that's the main thing," Swinney said. "I mean, listen, I know that's a question that would always be there. And again, I think they hired a great coach, and man, I love Alabama and always have, always will and will always pull for Alabama, except for when we play.

"But after 23 years, this is home."

Swinney predicts that a super league is eventually coming in college football, and while the Big Ten and SEC are carrying the biggest sticks right now in what the future of the playoff looks like, Swinney isn't the only one who believes Clemson is set up for success.

"That's a program that's not about a conference. That's a program that stands on its own two feet," said Venables, who is entering his fourth season in the SEC.

Nobody in the football world is closer to Swinney than his chief of staff, Woody McCorvey, who has known Swinney since 1990, when McCorvey came to Alabama with Gene Stallings and was Swinney's position coach.

McCorvey jokes that Swinney is not an optimist, but the ultimate optimist.

"One of the things I observed about Dabo a long time ago is that he's a note-taker, a good listener," McCorvey said. "He spends an abundance of time getting to know people, the players, their parents, who they're close to. He's not going to bring anybody in here that doesn't fit. He's a connector."

He's also at peace with who he is and what his program is, no matter what's going on around him, how others might view him or how gaudy the expectations might be outside the Clemson locker room.

Call it stubborn, resolute, convicted -- or simply Dabo being Dabo.

"I've had one undefeated team," Swinney said. "In 2018, we were the first 15-0 team in the history of major college football -- ever. And I think we're going to be the first 16-0 team. It's a race to do that."

And a race Swinney plans to keep on running. His way.