The college football regular season — save Army-Navy — is over.
It is time to honor the year’s best, and few topics are more paramount at this point on the calendar than the best coach over the past three months.
Saturday, the Big Ten and ACC Championship Games matched the four best power-conference coaches in the country. (Brian Kelly of Notre Dame doesn’t coach in a conference, and Tom Herman of Houston coaches in the Group of Five.)
Nick Saban, David Shaw, Bob Stoops, Jim McElwain, Jimbo Fisher, Gary Patterson, Mike Gundy, and Jim Harbaugh all did extremely well, but four men exceeded them from the power conferences. (In the Group of Five, Rocky Long of San Diego State, Jeff Brohm of Western Kentucky, Dino Babers of Bowling Green — now at Syracuse — Todd Monken of Southern Mississippi, and Blake Anderson of Arkansas State all flourished.)
Entering Saturday, fans and pundits were left to wonder:
Just exactly how did Kirk Ferentz guide Iowa to a 12-0 record?
Just exactly how did Mark Dantonio enable Michigan State to survive all its key injuries — including Connor Cook at Ohio State against the big, bad Buckeyes — and win a division championship?
Just exactly how did Larry Fedora engineer such a dramatic turnaround at North Carolina, giving the Tar Heels an outside shot at the College Football Playoff in the event of pure chaos on Saturday (which obviously did not emerge)?
All three men stood at the top of their profession this season. Had Iowa defeated Michigan State, it would have been very hard to deny Ferentz his moment in the sun, especially after the tedium and frustration of the previous several seasons in Iowa City. Clemson had been a national player the previous few college football seasons, but not Iowa. Ferentz, at 13-0, would have owned the most unassailable argument of them all.
The fact that Michigan State running back L.J. Scott did this, below, might not mean that Dantonio should suddenly become the coach of the year, but it does erode the case for Ferentz:
LJ Scott reaches over goalline for TD! #Sparty #MSUvsIOWA https://t.co/CFfT2JqBYS
— The Comeback NCAA (@TheComebackNCAA) December 6, 2015
One coach in the FBS managed to complete a 13-0 season. That coach defeated Fedora and North Carolina in the ACC Championship Game. Moreover, Dabo Swinney guided Clemson to a championship-soaked Orange Bowl for the first time in 34 seasons (the 2012 Orange Bowl did not possess national-title implications) by coaching extremely well in Charlotte against the Tar Heels.
Swinney went for it on fourth and three just inside the North Carolina 40, at a place where other coaches would have been content to punt. Swinney is on record as saying that he doesn’t fear fourth down with this year’s offense — giving the ball to Deshaun Watson one more time is a good thing, he says. That’s a coach who gets it.
Another sign of a coach who “gets it”? Knowing how much time one needs to run a quick play near the goal line at the end of a half. Swinney ran a scrimmage play with six seconds left in the first half instead of being overly cautious and kicking a field goal. Clemson scored a touchdown in a game it won by eight points. Swinney was not this good a coach in 2009 and 2010, when he took the first few tentative steps. His evolution has been something to behold in Death Valley.
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Why should Swinney be the coach of the year — more than Ferentz and more than Dantonio, his closest pursuers? Consider this: Swinney needed to hire better assistants back in 2010, and his selection of Chad Morris as offensive coordinator certainly began the turnaround he engineered at Clemson. Bringing aboard Brent Venables as defensive coordinator — especially in light of a 2015 season in which the Tigers had to replace seven starters, six of which were invited to the NFL combine, more than any other FBS school — has become an even more important moment in the life of Clemson football.
Indeed, Clemson’s ability to perform so well on defense most of the season (not all, but most) with a largely new crop of starters speaks highly of Dabo’s organization and preparation. The young pups ran out of steam as the season progressed, but they stood tall in the first half of the season and against Florida State in early November. Deshaun Watson started slowly in September, but when the tiring defense needed help, Watson was always there to provide it. It’s the alchemy of a perfect regular season, but it’s also the product of a coach who doesn’t seem overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks in front of him; that’s what Dabo appeared to be in 2010.
It’s completely different today.
Gone are the questions about whether Chad Morris’s departure to SMU would matter. They didn’t. Gone are the questions about maintaining continuity at a very high level in the program. Dabo’s done it. Everyone knew that Clemson could be really good if Watson could stay healthy, something which didn’t happen in 2014. However, 13-0 good? With an extremely inexperienced defense? With Morris no longer on the staff?
Even the most optimistic pro-Dabo Clemson fan would have found that hard to believe after the Orange Bowl bludgeoning suffered at the hands of Geno Smith and West Virginia four seasons ago.
Dabo Swinney is more of a CEO coach and less the hands-on play-caller other coaches like to be. However, by attaining an even greater level of success after his first crucial hire (Morris) left town, Dabo has demonstrated his coaching chops in a very powerful way.
Regardless of what might happen in the upcoming Orange Bowl against Oklahoma, Dabo Swinney has done the best job of any FBS head coach in 2015. He and his program deserve that level of recognition this year.
