The Dabo Swinney Era: Fans reveling in golden age of Clemson football

The Clemson football fan-base is at an all-time pinnacle right now and Tiger fans are enjoying each and every single minute of it.

Who would’ve thought that when a man named William Christopher Swinney – who went by the nickname Dabo — took over the Clemson football program on a full-time basis following the 2008 season, that we would see the Tigers rise to the top of the College Football world?

Well, that’s exactly what happened.

It didn’t happen overnight, but Swinney continued to build a foundation of culture and excellence at Clemson that has now resulted in two of the last three National Championships, five-straight CFB Playoff appearances and five-straight ACC Championships.

Swinney’s journey wasn’t an easy one.

Many Tiger fans wanted him fired after the 2010 season, which ended with a 6-7 overall record and a loss to USF in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

However, Clemson continued to build towards the future. The Tigers won the 2011 ACC Championship but suffered a 70-33 blowout against the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Orange Bowl. That loss forced Swinney to make a change, firing Kevin Steele as the Defensive Coordinator, and bringing in a man by the name of Brent Venables.

From that point on, the Tigers took noticeable steps to the next level, but no one expected what would happen in less than five years.

A quarterback by the name of Deshaun Watson took over as the starter and took Clemson on a ride during his freshman season. The Tigers finally ended the losing streak to in-state rival South Carolina and Clemson fans began to believe there was hope the Tigers could bring down Florida State in the ACC in 2015 and potentially clinch a berth in the CFB Playoff.

Watson led the Tigers all the way to the conference championship and then to the National Championship before falling just short against the Alabama Crimson Tide. He and the rest of his teammates weren’t about to let that be the end of the story.

The Watson-led Tigers got back to the National Championship in 2016, righting the wrong from a year ago, and captured the program’s first National Championship in more than 30 years.

It couldn’t get any better from that point, right?

Though Clemson was beaten by Alabama in the CFB Playoff semifinals in 2017, the Tigers roared right back in 2018 with another legendary quarterback in Trevor Lawrence. Lawrence, just a freshman, roasted that Crimson Tide secondary and led Clemson to a 44-16 victory.

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As we head into the National Championship game Monday night, it’s clear that Clemson fans are living their best life. The Tigers are about to compete in their fourth National Championship game in the past five seasons and there’s no sign of drop-off in the near future.

Clemson is recruiting and developing players at the highest level in the nation and, because of that, Tiger fans are reveling in the golden age of Clemson football.

It’s something that no one could’ve ever predicted a little more than a decade ago, but it’s the stunning reality that is setting in among the Tiger fan-base.

It won’t last forever, but it certainly doesn’t seem that it’s going to go away anytime soon.

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