Head coach Dabo Swinney made ACC history when the Clemson Tigers improved to 4-1 on the season with a 29-13 win over the Florida State Seminoles on Saturday night.
The win marked Swinney’s 174th at Clemson, which saw him pass longtime Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden for the most wins by a head coach in the storied history of the ACC.
The winningest coach in @ACCFootball history: @ClemsonFB‘s Dabo Swinney 👏 pic.twitter.com/s7LQwOuOIz
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) October 6, 2024
“Never in my imagination would I think 16 years later we’d be sitting here having this conversation. I’m just thankful, but honestly my name may be on the list, but ain’t nobody better than Bobby Bowden. That’s just a fact. He’s amazing, and honestly if I could just have half the impact on my players’ lives that Bobby Bowden had on his, then I would have lived a good life of purpose,” Swinney said in his postgame press conference via ESPN.
Swinney’s attachment to the Bowden family runs deep. While he was a wide receiver with the Alabama Crimson Tide in the late 1980s, his position coach was Bobby’s son Terry Bowden, who later added Swinney to his staff when he became Clemson’s head coach. When Bowden resigned in 2008, Swinney, who was Clemson’s recruiting coordinator and associate head coach, took the head coaching role and has held it ever since.
The next milestone in Swinney’s sights now becomes the 200-win mark. The only active FBS coaches over that mark are Kirk Ferentz, Willie Fritz, Mack Brown, and Brian Kelly.
[ACC Network, ESPN]
