Pat Forde called Dabo Swinney a D-plus hire. 15 years later, he still hears about it

Pat Forde, who’s been covering big-time college sports for over 30 years, learned early on in his journalism career that nobody’s going to bat 1.000 on predictions.

“If you have a lot of opinions and sling them around, some of them will be wrong and they’ll be thrown back at you,” he said. “That’s life in sportswriting.”

What isn’t life in sportswriting: Having one throwaway line from a column 15 years ago follow you around like you wrote it yesterday. Monthly — if not weekly — reminders from fans and readers of just how wrong you really were. Oh, and a framed printout of your words sitting in your subject’s office.

Welcome to life as the reporter who dared to doubt Dabo Swinney by labeling him a D-plus hire in December 2008.

Swinney, the longtime Clemson football coach, has accomplished a lot in his 15 seasons leading the Tigers. He’s racked up ACC championships at a historic rate, appeared in six College Football Playoffs and won two national titles.

He also tied College Football Hall of Famer Frank Howard for the most coaching wins in Clemson history two weeks ago, with his 165th, and can move into sole possession of first place with 166 this Saturday when the Tigers visit Miami.

And yet, Forde’s D-plus grade is still a near-annual talking point in Upstate South Carolina. Swinney has referenced it in news conferences and sit-down interviews, in podcast appearances with Colin Cowherd and Tony Dungy. He confirmed during fall camp in August that a printed version of the column still sits in his office at the Allen N. Reeves Football Complex, a constant reminder of where he came from, and joked that entering year 16, “I’m almost a C-minus.”

“I’m moving up,” Swinney said.

In other words, he hasn’t forgotten and doesn’t plan on forgetting any time soon.

Neither does Forde. Obviously.

“That’s the gold standard for bad takes for me,” he told The State.

Why Dabo was a D-plus hire

Forde, 59, doesn’t remember the specifics of his now-infamous column got assigned. He does remember being about four years into his job as national college sports writer for ESPN and thinking nothing of the piece itself, a routine roundup and evaluation of hires that cycle.

Among the head coaching decisions made by Power Five schools that year:

• Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen to Mississippi State

• Oakland Raiders head coach Lane Kiffin to Tennessee

• Southern Cal OC Steve Sarkisian to Washington

• New Orleans Saints OC Doug Marrone to Syracuse

• Iowa State coach Gene Chizik to Auburn

On top of that, Kansas State had lured Bill Snyder out of retirement for a second stint with the Wildcats and Clemson had tapped Swinney, its 39-year-old wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, to replace the resigned Tommy Bowden after Swinney went 4-2 as interim coach.

Forde wasn’t impressed, assigning letter grades of C-plus or lower to six of the seven hires made this far in the cycle in his column, ”Coaching hires have been a laugh riot this holiday season.” Swinney’s D-plus wasn’t even the lowest.

Snyder got a D. Chizik got an F.

“Short, sweet question for the slapstick administrators in question: What the hell were you thinking?” Forde wrote in the column published Dec. 18, 2008.

Looking back, Forde said, the gist of his Clemson criticism was pretty simple — and, it should be noted, certainly not unique to him. Many nationally and locally doubted the hiring of Swinney, who had no head coach or coordinator experience when athletic director Terry Don Phillips hired him over other candidates including Kiffin and Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster.

Forde also cautioned against the good vibes generated by Swinney’s 4-2 interim record — “Who knew that beating Duke and Virginia could lead to such ample rewards?” he wrote — and openly wondered if Clemson’s season finale win over rival South Carolina swayed things too much.

“If you’ve decided that the head coach’s regime has failed, which for Tommy Bowden, that was the decision, then usually you don’t hire somebody off of that staff as the replacement, you know?” Forde said. “Usually either the whole staff goes or a large percentage of the staff goes and you bring in somebody else in charge.”

“So I just thought if it wasn’t working before, what’s to make us sure that this guy is gonna make it work this time?”

Swinney, in a clip now used widely by the Clemson football program in promotional videos, had a quick answer for Forde and anyone else doubting his credentials. He was asked during his Dec. 1, 2008, introductory news conference if the Tigers were taking a gamble on him.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a gamble at all. If you’re asking me, I think it’s a pretty good bet.”

Clemson is ‘built to last’

Forde felt like his D-plus grade was on life support midway through the 2011 season, as Clemson got out to an 8-0 start in Swinney’s third full season with a cast of dynamic offensive playmakers including Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins, DeAndre Hopkins and Dwayne Allen.

Then the No. 6 Tigers lost three of their last four regular season games and got “atomized” by West Virginia in the 2012 Orange Bowl, Forde said, with an embarrassing 70-33 loss, putting a damper on Clemson’s first ACC championship since 1991 and first 10-win season since 1990.

“And then I was back to, ‘I don’t know,’” Forde said.

From there, it didn’t take him or the rest of the college football world long to realize Swinney and Clemson were legit. The Tigers ended their 2012 season with a bang — defeating LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl behind Boyd’s iconic fourth and 16 pass to Hopkins that formally put the term “Clemsoning” to bed.

Summarizing Swinney’s Clemson tenure to date is a pick your poison exercise. At the top, naturally, are the Tigers’ four national championship game appearances and two national championship wins — both over Alabama — in a five-season stretch.

In reaching the pinnacle of the sport with 2016 and 2018 national titles, Swinney constructed and built elite teams with a combination of generational quarterbacks (Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence), blue-chip recruits (Dexter Lawrence, Christian Wilkins, Travis Etienne) and lesser recruited players his program identified and helped develop (Hunter Renfrow, Isaiah Simmons, Nolan Turner).

The Tigers have also been remarkably consistent, entering the 2023 season with the second-most wins nationally since 2011 and 2015, only trailing Alabama; 12 straight seasons of 10 or more wins and at least one postseason win; and seven outright ACC titles in eight years, the first program in an active Power Five conference to do that since 1971-79 Alabama.

“He really did have an infectious enthusiasm and a belief and obviously an excellent coaching staff,” Forde said of Swinney. “And the more A list talent that they brought in, the more you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, Clemson’s built to last.’”

For Swinney, 53, it’s been an overwhelmingly successful tenure with some bumps along the way. Clemson has recently taken a step down from its Tier 1 national standing, with eight losses and counting over the last two and a half seasons after seven combined losses from 2015-20.

Swinney has also taken heat for Clemson’s lack of transfer portal usage, his preference for internal hires and his previous comments on player compensation in the wake of the name, image and likeness (NIL) era — all topics he’s addressed at length, often pushing back and pushed back on criticism.

“I can understand the mentality of, ‘Why do I need to change things? Look how good we are,’” Forde said. “But eventually everything has to change, and everybody has to change. And I don’t think he’s been super fast to adapt.”

A record win approaches

Valid critiques aside, Forde said he still views Swinney as a top five coach — up there with Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, Alabama’s Nick Saban and Ohio State’s Ryan Day — and one of the most media-friendly coaches he’s covered.

Forde and Swinney have crossed paths a handful of times since the former labeled the latter a D-plus hire, primarily around CFP games (a top assignment for Forde, who has covered college football nationally for ESPN, Yahoo Sports and, since 2019, Sports Illustrated).

They have never directly addressed the column, Forde said, but “I wonder if a couple of times when I’ve been talking to him one on one if there’s a little thought bubble over his head saying, ‘Yeah, you’re that idiot that gave me a D-plus.’”

Forde also gets a kick out of the fact Swinney keeps a framed copy of the column in his office, likening it to the 21st-century college football version of Harry Truman gleefully holding up an “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune after his upset victory in the 1948 presidential election.

Swinney has gotten plenty of mileage out of the famously cold take, too, especially after he formally outlasted everyone else in his cycle, with Mullen leaving Mississippi State for Florida in 2017 and Snyder retiring (again) from Kansas State in 2018. No other coach mentioned lasted over five years, and three were fired.

It’s both entertaining and inspiring for Swinney, who has long joked that he’s “thankful for the plus” on his D-plus grade but also used it as a reminder to live his life and implore others to live their lives “inside out” and internally motivated, rather than dwelling on outsiders’ opinions.

As Swinney told ESPN in 2022: “I’m the only coach that got hired that year that’s still left. So, yeah, I was least likely to succeed, but it’s been fun, man, and we’ve done it our way, to prove that we can win by doing it right and not compromising. We sort of beat to our own drum.”

On Saturday in South Beach, that drum may beat on a record 166th career victory for Swinney, whose Tigers (4-2, 2-2 ACC) are a three-point favorite at Miami.

If Clemson does win, expect further smiles from Swinney and further acceptance from Forde, the writer who dished out the failing grade.

“I certainly give myself an F for giving Dabo a D plus,” he said, laughing.

And if Forde could go back in time and rewrite his Swinney grade blurb?

“A plus-plus. He’s going to be the greatest coach in Clemson history. He’s going to take the program to unprecedented heights. And I saw it coming a mile away.”