A different coach

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CLEMSON -- When you're used to having multiple conversations with a head coach every week during a season, for 14 seasons not even including his previous stint as an assistant coach, there are days when you might take his presence for granted. It's natural and human.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

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First off, some context on what it's like at some other places:

Kirby Smart's formal press conferences on Mondays of game weeks usually last 15 minutes. This week, in advance of perhaps the biggest game of the college football regular season, Smart was perhaps feeling generous and let it go to almost 17 minutes before bouncing.

There's another rather important game taking place Saturday between Alabama and LSU. At Nick Saban's formal press conference Monday, the moderator interrupted at the 8:21 mark to say there was time for one more question.

Yesterday, Dabo Swinney's press conference ended after more than 49 minutes. And it ended not because a moderator cut it off, but because of the prolonged silence in the room that indicated there were no more questions to ask.

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Certainly, there were important things for Clemson's future Hall of Fame coach to tend to as he prepares his team for Saturday's game at Notre Dame.

But he'd have probably gone for an hour or more had he been asked to.

Within that 49 minutes he recalled the childlike joy he experienced four days ago when he devoted his entire Saturday to watching college football.

"I'm like, 'People do this every week!' It was a blast. I wrote it out like a kid: I had all the noon games. I had all the 3:30 games. And then I had all the night games. And I didn't even know I had it on my TV, but I had this thing called tiling where you can have like four games. And it was the greatest thing ever. I mean I literally just watched football all day. Took notes, made mental notes as well. It was a blast."

He also impersonated his old coach Gene Stallings imparting the rather valuable lifelong lesson that games aren't played on paper.

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You get stuff like this when your coach is accessible, approachable and still just a regular guy even if his paycheck and his lofty professional stature suggest otherwise.

College football has become corporate. It's become stuffy and buttoned-up. It's become so ruthless and predatory on the path to the superconference era that sometimes you wonder how much collegiality and soul there's left to squeeze out.

Wherever this enterprise is headed, whatever it turns into, Dabo Swinney is going to be the same dude. And that's beneficial not just for us media pinheads who have a regular audience with him, but for our audience as well.

When you are a ravenous fan of one team, almost all of your focus is on that one team. So even as a supporter there are times when you might gloss over the assets as you snicker at some of the slogans or idiosyncrasies of the coach or program as a whole.

But take some time to see how it goes down at other places that do the football thing so well. Take some time to see how much highly successful coaches elsewhere want to let you in on some of the more interesting and illuminating aspects of their leadership.

You think Saban, Smart and others want to tell you what they did on their open Saturday? You think they're writing down all the games and then reacting to the TV tiling technology like it's Christmas morning?

At present, Swinney's team is 8-0 and No. 4 in the only poll that means anything. That's a great place to be, particularly after last year's slide, but we're all still trying to sort out just how good this team can be.

Aside from a comprehensive dismantling of N.C. State, they've made it hard on themselves in many ways. Couldn't pull away from Wake Forest after taking a 14-0 lead. Couldn't keep Florida State from getting back in it after the Tigers went up 20. Couldn't keep the ball in their hands or come up with stops in falling behind by two touchdowns to Syracuse at home.

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What does it all mean? Where does this team end up? Our answer to that is a phrase that's not at all popular here in 2022 when everyone wants (and has) a definitive take on everything (until that take looks ridiculous a week later, at which point they move on to something different):

We don't know. You don't know. The head coach doesn't know.

And that's the fun of it.

Some folks have revised some history of this golden era, inaccurately recalling that Clemson's truly great teams tore through everyone.

The 2016 team seemed bored for so much of that season because they knew they were better than everyone else, knew they just couldn't wait to get back at Alabama.

Swinney pointed out that the 2015 team might've actually been better than the 2016 group even if it couldn't close the deal with a few detail things in the 45-40 defeat in the desert.

Over in Athens, Smart and his staff are probably dealing with something similar to what Clemson went through in 2016 -- the challenge of being impressed with yourself after high achievement.

"I aged in dog years in '16," Swinney said of eight games being decided by a touchdown or less. "Remember all year everybody's like, 'What's wrong with Clemson? They stink. They barely beat Troy.' ... Deshaun Watson was either a touchdown or an interception, right? ... The frustrating thing about that team, at times we were dysfunctionally good. And that can be very frustrating to be as a coach. It was such a talented group, but it was just like they wanted to push fast-forward: 'Can we just get to Tampa. We know where we're going.' As opposed to, 'No. We need to beat Troy.' I'll probably write about it in a book one day."

Swinney said he feels like he's reliving some of that season with the 2022 group. They struggled to put a complete game together, let too many teams hang around, and it finally caught up with them against Pitt.

This team enters November still trying to find its best self, its championship self.

So the natural follow-up, which we asked:

If the issue with this team isn't hitting the fast-forward button to Los Angeles, what is it?

"I think just maturity in some spots," he said. "Youth in some spots. A little bit of a lack of continuity in a couple of areas. That's probably been the biggest thing. And we've played some really good teams. I mean we've played some elite quarterbacks, man, that nobody wants to give any credit to. ... But every year's a different deal, just like every week is a different week."

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And this is a different coach.

In this refreshingly wild college football season, no coach out there knows how things are going to end up.

But if you're a Clemson fan, yesterday presented yet another reminder to treasure the coach you ended up with.

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