Dabo Swinney defends Clemson's national relevancy ahead of 2023 to return to College Football Playoff

After making six straight College Football Playoff appearances, the Clemson Tigers haven’t found themselves back on the CFP stage since 2020. Fans became accustomed to seeing the Tigers in college football’s biggest moments, but has back-to-back seasons without the orange and white caused Clemson to fall out of national relevancy as regular title contenders? Tigers’ head coach Dabo Swinney addressed the topic at ACC Media Days.

“Listen, people talk about Clemson,” Swinney said. “We’ve had 12 really, really good years in a row. Some great years in there. It’s hard to get to a final four when there’s 133 teams trying to do it. We’ve been there as much as anybody.”

Swinney has turned the Clemson program around in a major way since taking the reins of the program in 2008 initially as an interim head coach. Since then he’s led the Tigers to eight ACC Championship wins and six College Football Playoff appearances.

The Tigers have lost just two semifinal games in the College Football Playoff under Swinney, leading them to a national championship appearance in four of their playoff runs and walking away with two national championships in the 2016 and 2018 seasons.

But attaining championship dominance does come with consequences, the main one being facing the critics if that high bar of championship success is not met even in small doses.

“If not going eight years in a row means we stink, well, I guess we stink, but maybe we can get back there this year and be able to say we went seven out of the last nine years,” Swinney said. “That would be a pretty cool accomplishment.”

Clemson’s six-year run of consecutive College Football Playoff appearances was paired with six straight ACC championship wins. And like their playoff streak, that streak also came to an end in 2021 when the Tigers missed out on the ACC title game for the first time since 2014.

The Tigers were able to bounce back last season and reclaim the ACC throne following a dominant win over North Carolina. Maybe this year will be the season when the Tigers return back to the College Football Playoff, which Swinney knows is possible if his team stay focused on the task at hand.

“That’s not going to happen if we don’t win the opener and win the state championship and win this league and win the closer. That’s all we’re focused on,” Swinney said. “None of the rest of that stuff really just — what we can control, and that’s our prep, our mindset, how we attack each day.”