Clemson Football: Comparing Dabo Swinney to Nick Saban

How does Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney compare to Alabama coach Nick Saban to this point in his career? The numbers are overwhelming.

It’s clear that both Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney and Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban have a lot of respect for one another.

For years, Saban has easily been the best coach in the nation, building an elite program. He is continuing to recruit and coach at a high level, but there is a young guy that is beginning to compete with Saban for the title of ‘top dog.’

Dabo Swinney came onto the national scene just a few years ago, but has made an enormous impact since lifting the Clemson football program out of the depths of which it used to be in.

Now, there are media analysts that are beginning to take notice when making their coaching rankings. Some are starting to list Swinney and Saban as 1a and 1b. Others still keep Saban first with Swinney second.

That discussion prompted me to go pull some numbers. Here’s what we found after looking at statistics comparing both Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban.

Punching the Numbers…

Nick Saban has been a head coach in college for 23 overall years, one year with Toledo, five years with Michigan State, five years with LSU and 12 years with Alabama.

During that time, Saban has totaled 237 wins to just 63 loss (.789 win percentage) and has won six total National Championships, one with LSU (2003) and five with Alabama. He has made the CFB Playoff five times, every year that it has been in place.

Before his stint with Alabama, Saban had a good career with LSU and a decent time with Michigan State. But, when you look at the numbers, they aren’t that much better than Swinney’s.

Swinney has been a head coach for 11 years, all with Clemson football. He has 116 wins to just 30 losses, (.795 win percentage). It took Saban 10 years before he won a National Championship. Swinney has won two in 11 years time. Dabo has made the CFB Playoff four times, one less than Saban.

Swinney currently has a record of 2-2 vs. Saban, as well. I know you can’t necessarily do the math this way, but at this point, if you were to take the numbers that Swinney has put up and project them to a total of 23 years, he would have right around 240 wins and between 4-6 National Championships.

It’s tough to project, but if you just compare the two coaches in their first 11 years, you’d have to take Swinney. In Saban’s first 11 years, he had just a .679 winning percentage, one National Championship and had just three total bowl wins.

That is a culmination of things, though, and College Football isn’t really the same back then as it is now.

In the end, I think there’s one takeaway that we can glean from looking at the numbers and it’s this: Dabo Swinney is on pace to be a historically great coach. What he has done in this first decade with Clemson football is unlike anything we’ve ever seen and he certainly deserves to be in the conversation with Nick Saban when talking about the best coaches in the nation.

I mean, think about it this way. If you were starting a football program tomorrow, who would you rather have as a head coach? I’d imagine the vast majority would take Swinney.