Bowden: Respect comes with consistency for Clemson |
Former Clemson coach Tommy Bowden calls his former assistant and current Tigers coach Dabo Swinney “a big vision guy.”
“He doesn't get intricately involved with an offense or defense,” Bowden said this week on Charlotte-area radio WFNZ. “He hires guys that know how to do it and lets them do it. He has great players and is a great CEO. He has an administration – that's a school that loves football. A great fanbase…They have all the ingredients to be around for a long time at the top of the heap.” Bowden has kept tabs on the program since his 10-year run as head coach ended midway through the 2008 campaign, where Swinney was named interim coach. The ‘ACC Blitz’ analyst says Swinney shines on gameday. “The number one the reason I hired Dabo is because he's a good recruiter,” Bowden said, who finished 72-45 as Clemson’s head coach. “He's going to bring in good players. The thing I think he brings is he's a heck of a gameday coach…He's hired a really good staff. He's got good players. He's got a defensive coordinator who is arguably the best in the country. “But you go to the other side of the ball, he tried to play-call with Billy Napier his first year and it didn't work so he made a change with Chad Morris and made a great hire. He lost Chad and he's got three guys really on offense in Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott, two young coordinators, and a quarterback coach in Brandon Streeter who played quarterback for me my first year at Clemson.” Bowden says respect nationally for the program has come in proportion to what Clemson has accomplished along the way. “I think they're getting some national respect,” said Bowden. “You look at what they've done recently beating Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio State – who they've beaten rather significantly...Other schools like Alabama have been doing it for years, but Clemson has just been now doing it recently. I think he's had six 10-win seasons. “I don't know if it (the national respect) was justified until last year. They played in the national championship game and lost (before that). He’s beat Saban, Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher. Dabo has put himself in a category of coaches at the top of the profession and now he's developing some consistency. That's the true test of a program. He'll get the respect nationally as the season goes along.”
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