Last year, after Clemson fell at NC State and dropped to 2-2 with its second loss in the month of September, Paul Finebaum appeared on ESPN’s Get Up show and declared that “Dabo’s dynasty is done.”
Fast forward to this year, and the ESPN personality reiterated that belief after Swinney’s team lost 35-14 at Notre Dame last Saturday.
“I felt last year – I said this kind of just more for alliteration than for anything else – that Dabo’s dynasty was done. I said it on one of the ESPN chat shows, and it got tweeted out quickly,” Finebaum said.
“It’s true. It is over from the perspective of them being in the championship game, in the final four every year now. That’s two years in a row that they’re out. It’s a bigger blow to the ACC, whose commissioner was not in favor of the 12-team playoff.”
Finebaum talked about what he thinks “has not been a very good season for Clemson” despite its 8-1 record and said he’s “not too surprised” that the Tigers are no longer unbeaten.
“In the offseason, Dabo Swinney bet on himself,” Finebaum said. “He elevated coordinators, most of which nobody had ever heard of before, and it’s to be determined long-term whether that was the right call. But short term, this has not been a very good season for Clemson in spite of a pretty good record with only one loss. But they’ve had so many narrow escapes, and you could feel it coming. I’m not too surprised. I know you’re not. And they’re gone. The idea that here we are heading into the second weekend in November, and Clemson and Alabama are gone (as predicted College Football Playoff teams). That is a paradigm shift in college football.”
–Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
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