There are coaching trees, and then there is whatever is branching off from Dabo Swinney's at Clemson…
While Dabo Swinney has had an incredible run leading Clemson for well over a decade now, let's just say his coaching tree leaves a lot to be desired…
Swinney initially served as a wide receivers coach at his alma mater of Alabama throughout the 1990s. He first came to Clemson as part of Tommy Bowden's 2003 Tigers staff. Fate would have it, he took over for Bowden as the interim in 2008. It took a few years, but since 2011, Clemson has been a program guaranteed to win at least 10 games annually. They are a national power.
But despite winning two national titles and eight conference championships, Swinney's Clemson coaching tree has yet to yield anything close to a bountiful harvest. How bad is it? Check this out!
Dabo Swinney coaching tree: What college head coaches have served under him?
There are as many coaches ranked ahead of Jeff Scott than he had wins at USF…
I don't even know what to say about Jeff Scott's beyond disastrous tenure driving the South Florida Bulls into the ground. He may have taken over the AAC program during the COVID campaign in 2020, but he never won more than two games in a season. Scott was fired with three games left last year with a 4-26 overall record and an unthinkable 1-19 record in conference play.
Had this been a Power Five gig, it would have been a bigger deal over how poor a job Scott did as a head coach. Then again, his inability to get this rolling in the wake of the mediocre Charlie Strong era is probably why USF is so far away from going Power Five. I mean, they were a really solid Big East program back in the day, and were ranked No. 2 overall at one point in time!
For now, I-4 rival UCF has left them in the dust, as the Knights are joining the Big 12 with the likes of BYU, Cincinnati and Houston. All four of those previous mid-major programs have shown us in recent years a great ability to play up in their Power Five games. As for USF, the Bulls are just going to have to trust that Alex Golesh has all the answers Scott did not. He is no Coach Prime…
Scott may get one more shot at leading a team after coaching rehab, but that is wishful thinking.
Chad Morris was not that good at SMU and was an absolute tire fire at Arkansas
It seems like a lifetime ago, but Chad Morris had a ton of promise as a college head coach after leaving Clemson. He wasn't the first hotshot coordinator to work for Swinney, but he was the first to devolve into a tire fire of epic proportions. Though he had like one good year at SMU, it could not have gone worse for him during his two-year run dragging Arkansas to the bottom of an abyss.
In three years at SMU, Morris went 14-22 leading the Mustangs and 8-16 in conference play. He had SMU go 7-5 in his final season in Dallas, leaving before the bowl game to take over for Bret Bielema at Arkansas in 2018. During his two years in Fayetteville, Morris went 4-18 overall and 0-14 in SEC play. He didn't win a single conference game at Arkansas… How is that even possible?!
When he got fired in 2019, Arkansas was arguably the worst program in the Power Five. Keep in mind that this isn't Duke, Indiana or Kansas, historic basketball powers with little college football history to be proud of. Arkansas is a top-25 job with top-25 resources. Somehow, someway, he made this team worse than Vanderbilt on a regular basis in the same conference. It was horrific…
Unlike Scott, Morris will never be a major college head coach again after that Arkansas debacle.
Tony Elliott dealt with tragedy during his first struggle-filled season at Virginia
For Tony Elliott to be third on this list after having only gone 3-7 in his first season leading the Virginia Cavaliers speaks volumes about the status of Swinney's coaching tree. While I may be in the minority that Elliott will at least be respectable in Charlottesville, it became very apparent that he is not Bronco Mendenhall in Year 1 leading the Hoos. Sadly, tragedy struck the UVA program.
Three of Elliott's players were murdered by another former player back in November. Absolutely devastated by the tragedy, Virginia canceled its final two games of the season vs. Coastal Carolina and Virginia Tech. Nobody associated with the Chanticleers or the Hokies had any issues with this whatsoever. It is still so heartbreaking this even happened. UVA's next game should be powerful.
Frankly, I think this could serve as a turning point for Elliott at Virginia. How he, his team and his staff respond to this will show us what they are really made of. I don't know how good of a team the Cavaliers will be next year, but if they play together as one, they have an outside shot at going to a bowl game. Even if they come up short of that goal, Virginia has to show some real progress.
Elliott comes in at No. 3 on this list because he hasn't been fired yet, so he could turn this around.
Brent Venables went bowling during Year 1 at Oklahoma, but that is mostly it
One could argue that it is a more critical Year 2 for Brent Venables than it is even for Elliott. The former Clemson offensive coordinator really has no excuses, built-in or fabricated. Venables doesn't coach at Virginia; he leads Oklahoma! Even though it was his first stab at being a college head coach, the Sooners can't go 6-7 under his watch again. This is way too strong of a program.
The other factor in this is Venables replaced an outstanding head coach in Lincoln Riley, who replaced a coaching legend in Bob Stoops. In a matter of one year, Venables had OU looking like John Blake OU, and nobody wants that. Furthermore, this is Oklahoma's last year in the Big 12, a league the Sooners have historically dominated. Come 2024, it will be all about the SEC for OU…
Simply put, Venables needs to win at least eight games to realistically get a third year on the job at Oklahoma. It has to be more than just incremental progress. The Sooners are going to the SEC and are going to get eaten alive if they don't have a head coach ready for that major leap up in competition. They don't have to win the Big 12, but need to finish at least fifth or so in the league.
Venables is a great defensive mind and a recruiter, but he has to prove his worth as a head coach.
Billy Napier was great at Louisiana, but had a challenging first season at Florida
Lo and behold! We have found our first successful branch stemming off the Swinney coaching tree. The craziest part is Billy Napier was the least successful or as well-thought-of assistant who eventually became a college head coach off Swinney's staff. After failing as Swinney's offensive coordinator in 2010, Napier became arguably the first Nick Saban rehabilitation success story.
Napier went to Tuscaloosa for the first time as an analyst in 2011 before briefly serving on Jim McElwain's Colorado State staff in 2012. He returned to Alabama in 2013, where he served as the Crimson Tide's wide receivers coach from 2013 to 2016. After that, Napier went on to become the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns head coach where he had such a phenomenal four-year run in Lafayette.
Napier went 40-12 overall and 27-5 in conference play in his four years leading the Ragin' Cajuns. He won back-to-back Sun Belt titles in 2020 and 2021 with back-to-back, top-25 finishes. He also had three 10-win seasons in Lafayette. While he only went 6-7 in his first year at Florida last season, he still had the Gators bowling, notching his first signature victory there home vs. Utah.
Things could change in a few years, but it's going to be hard to say that Napier is not a good coach.
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