As with my Virginia Tech piece<\/a>, which garnered a viral life with Hokie fans, perhaps a lot.<\/p>\nClemson was one of the elite programs in college football between 2015-2020, with two national titles and four total title game appearances, never finishing outside of the AP Top 4 over that six year period.<\/p>\n
During that window, they were college football\u2019s premier program. <\/p>\n
After a five year decline culminating in a 7-6 2025 season, that claim feels distant.<\/p>\n
How much of their decline was a failure to adapt to a shifting environment, the cycles of empire, or the eventual complacency that victory seemingly always guarantees? <\/p>\n
What can Texas learn from it? <\/p>\n
THE CLEMSON MODEL<\/p>\n
Clemson featured elite defensive and skill position talent, innovative coaching, unremarkable offensive line play, and a homegrown developmental strategy that placed a massive emphasis on culture, \u201cour kind of guy\u201d, and a mutual promise between player and staff that both would stay the course. <\/p>\n
They were the counterpoint to Nick Saban\u2019s ruthless mega classes and unceasing effort to turn over his roster and staff to guard against complacency.<\/p>\n
Clemson signed small boutique classes, bragged about their staff tenure and security, and let athletes blossom on their own timelines. <\/p>\n
Clemson\u2019s NFL Draft eligible players tended to stay longer than expected and the handful of young starters thrust into action were typically the freshman phenom Trevor Lawrence variety who started because they were unicorns, not because they had to. <\/p>\n
Did playing in the ACC help their cause?<\/p>\n
Of course, but Clemson was also scalable to big boy play. <\/p>\n
The league also hurt their cause, in ways you may not anticipate, which I\u2019ll cover later. <\/p>\n
A program that went 79-7 over a six year span between 2015-2020 and played for four national titles morphed into a team that\u2019s 47-20 over their last five years with one opening round playoff loss. <\/p>\n
THE RECRUITING & DEVELOPMENT DECLINE<\/p>\n
YearRecruiting Class RankPortal Class Rank Season Record 202621317-62025234410-4202414669-42023115411-32022145110-320215n\/a10-320203n\/a10-220199n\/a14-120186n\/a15-0201711n\/a12-2201610n\/a14-120158n\/a14-1<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a persistent perception that Best Clemson didn\u2019t recruit at an elite level. <\/p>\n
In their heyday, they were comfortably a Top 10 recruiting program despite never taking large classes or surplus blue chips that they knew would wash out simply to juice their rankings. <\/p>\n
These were \u201ctrue classes\u201d, not fan marketing exercises. <\/p>\n
Texas A&M leaps to mind as the false class counterpoint, but much of the college landscape was guilty. Including Texas. The Horns had some well-constructed class fictions.<\/p>\n
On a per player basis, Clemson was clearly a Top 5 program. They emphasized landing blue chips at certain positions and were happy to take 3 stars in units they didn\u2019t deem vital or were developmental by their nature. <\/p>\n
Clemson\u2019s five stars also had an unbelievable hit rate: Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson, Sammy Watkins, Dexter Lawrence, Tee Higgins, Christian Wilkins \u2013 just to name a few. <\/p>\n
Interestingly, that blue chip hit rate streak ended around 2020 as a number of their highly touted recruits started to bust. <\/p>\n
In fact, Clemson\u2019s best ranked recruiting classes were the core element of their eventual decline \u2013 they never recruited better by the numbers than between 2018-2021. <\/p>\n
At the same time, another key recruiting tool gained prominence: the portal. <\/p>\n
Dabo treated the portal with contempt, Clemson\u2019s pockets are respectable but not elite, and their failure to enforce a vitality curve showed up on the field. <\/p>\n
Increasingly, Clemson featured a few starters and a number of 2nd teamers that were not really playable at an elite program. <\/p>\n
You may recall my Clemson playoff preview from a couple of years ago where I struggled to square the NFL top line talent level of the defense (very high) with their questionable effort, bad schemes, and lack of depth. <\/p>\n
Texas crucified them for 292 rushing yards exploiting edges and linebackers who had no clue how to set the edge against outside zone. <\/p>\n
I thought that malaise could be addressed with a new staff and better teaching, but the issues are much deeper. A skilled coach can cut infection out of a program, but what happens when the program is the contamination? <\/p>\n
A portal embrace could have addressed many of those issues, but an insistence on their way has hampered them and the institutional desire to threaten Dabo \u2013 the man who created relevant modern Clemson football \u2013 is almost zero. <\/p>\n
COMPLACENCY KILLS<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, Clemson narrowcasted for a certain type of athlete and then developed the hell out of them. <\/p>\n
Somehow, they\u2019re now selecting for and appealing to a different type \u2013 one that superficially resembles the Clemson athletes that drove the program a decade ago, but lacking some inner drive to maximize. Or those athletes now exist in a program that\u2019s gone too country club or church social. <\/p>\n
Best Clemson was \u201cFamily, but with an edge.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ACC has also been a hindrance. Not just the small TV checks, but the lack of reality checks. <\/p>\n
Counterintuitively, when things are going well, a weak league is just insurance for your playoff run. Rest that starter another week. Who cares? You\u2019re playing Stanford. <\/p>\n
But when things are going poorly at a Clemson level program, weak leagues fail to provide brutal reality checks. <\/p>\n
A challenging schedule is a corrective. A hard public slap.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve read my takes on conference alignment, the monetary and \u201cit\u2019s just more fun\u201d reasons are self-evident, but perhaps my biggest reason Texas had to leave the Big 12 is that Texas bureaucracy and fans only respond to humiliation as a corrective. <\/p>\n
We must be challenged externally as the default setting is complacency.<\/p>\n
It appears we\u2019re not alone in that.<\/p>\n
Clemson\u2019s decline took five years to be fully revealed, disguised by fake ten win seasons built on Wake Forest, Georgia Southern, Wofford, and Boston College. <\/p>\n
Playing in the SEC or Big 10 would have revealed the infection earlier. In fact, it did. 2024 Clemson was 0-3 against the SEC while the Tigers were 9-1 against all other comers. <\/p>\n
Clemson has re-hauled its entire staff over the last two years, but many of those additions are unimiginative retreads (Tom Allen, DC) and Clemson family (OC Chad Morris, QB coach Tajh Boyd) who may not be au courant. <\/p>\n
This phase of cycling out coordinators and promising new blood (and getting old blood) isn\u2019t new. At this point, it\u2019s a coaching cliche. But the pattern must be honored. <\/p>\n
As for Swinney and how he\u2019s viewed, this 2025 ESPN preseason head coach power ranking had Dabo at #3 in the nation.<\/a> Clearly predicated on an older body of work, not analyzing the trend line.<\/p>\nWhat will that power ranking look like in May 2026? What\u2019s the value prop of Clemson Football absent a head coach perceived to be absolutely elite?<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the broader lessons from Clemson are instructive.<\/p>\n
Unlike Dabo Swinney, Sark doesn\u2019t have the titles to tell his critics or his own inner monologue to be quiet after a 10-3 season. Throw in arguably the country\u2019s hardest 2026 schedule and there is no place to hide. <\/p>\n
A final #12 2025 Longhorn ranking was treated like an offseason wake up call \u2013 not a successful year. The SEC move and Sark\u2019s playoff runs reset Texas fan psychology. <\/p>\n
Part of enforcing a vitality curve isn\u2019t just internal attitudes, it\u2019s imposed by external reality. <\/p>\n
For too long, Clemson has been denying its own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What can other programs learn from this cautionary tale? As with my Virginia Tech piece, which garnered a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1771,121561,399,398,396,397,99,138790,5690],"class_list":{"0":"post-559348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-clemson-tigers","9":"tag-dabo-swinney-90-pelham","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-steve-sarkisian-92-west","16":"tag-texas-longhorns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}