The coach who’s won more national championships than anyone in college football history recently became the highest-paid coach of this calendar year. Before that, it was the coach of the reigning national championships who cashed in.
But Clemson athletic director Graham Neff insisted his coach’s new high-priced contract wasn’t in reaction to those hefty paydays handed out to Nick Saban and Kirby Smart.
“This was not a hurry up and get something done because of the changing market recently,” Neff said.
Dabo Swinney is college football’s newest $10-million man. That became official Thursday when Clemson’s board of trustees approved a new 10-year, $115-million contract for the Tigers’ veteran coach that will pay him $10.5 million this year.
Neff said Swinney’s new deal, which will keep him around as Clemson’s coach until the end of the 2031 season, has been in the works since shortly after he took over as athletic director in December. A month earlier, Michigan State inked Mel Tucker, who was just completing his second season at the helm of the Spartans’ program, to a 10-year, $95-million deal.
Swinney was originally slated to earn $8.5 million this year before incentives, but Neff knew that was bound to change given the investment Michigan State had just made. So Neff said he called Swinney’s representatives shortly after taking over as Clemson’s director of athletics.
“Certainly it was an effort for us to be proactive,” Neff said.
But Neff didn’t dive straight into negotiations. Given Swinney’s accomplishments – he has led Clemson to seven ACC titles and a pair of national championships during his 14-year tenure as the full-time head coach – Neff said that part was pretty straightforward given Clemson wanted to compensate Swinney as a top-3 coach in the sport.
Instead, Neff’s initial conversations with Swinney’s representation as well as university president Jim Clements and the board of trustees were about making sure everyone was on the same page with that. The market would dictate what kind of numbers Clemson would be looking at, and Tucker’s deal gave Neff and company a starting point.
The exact amount started coming into clearer focus in July when Smart, fresh off leading Georgia to its first national championship since 1981, was rewarded with a new contract that will pay him $10.25 million this season. Alabama topped that late last month when it made Saban, the only other active FBS coach with multiple national championships, the nation’s highest-paid coach with a contract extension that’s paying him a whopping $10.7 million this year.
Clemson essentially split the difference with Swinney, who officially became the second highest-paid coach in the country when Clemson rubber-stamped his new contract Thursday morning. Neff said the financial details of Swinney’s fourth contract since he’s been Clemson’s coach were hashed out well before then.
“I remember back to working with (former athletic director) Dan (Radakovich), and the prior three, the market and the negotiations weren’t as straightforward just because we were wanting achievements, wanting to invest and the market is moving,” Neff said. “But what he’s achieved and where our investment is for Clemson football in all aspects, it’s a small group.
“Did we intentionally wait until some of these (other contracts were finalized)? Not necessarily. But I was very intentional about understanding that the market was still moving even past December where there was a lot of coaching changes and tried to make sure we were strategic in how we balanced all of that together.”