Fifty-seven million dollars buys a lot of things. ForClemson's football program, it brings a coach with a lot of eyes on him patience.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel ranked Dabo Swinney second in his examination of the six coaching buyouts that could determine this year’s college football coaching carousel. Swinney’s estimated $57 million price tag trails only USC coach Lincoln Riley’s $70 million buyout.
Thamel could not have made it more obvious however that Dabo is no where near the hot seat.
“Clemson is not firing Swinney,” Thamel wrote.
Swinney led Clemson to six consecutive College Football Playoff appearances from 2015 through 2020 and won two national championships and eight ACC titles over the past 11 seasons. Those accomplishments earned Swinney a contract
that would cost Clemson $57 million to terminate.
Clemson’s greatest run was built on elite high school recruiting and player development. College football now operates through escalating player costs and aggressive transfer-portal spending. Swinney has adjusted somewhat. Clemson added 10 defensive transfers last offseason, but the Tigers took only one transfer on offense.
That imbalance became painfully visible during Clemson’s 41-13 loss to Miami. Clemson is still capable of winning plenty of games, but the standard around this program before the post-Trevor Lawrence era was never supposed to become “plenty of games.”
We compare the 2021 College Football Preseason AP Poll to different ways of measuring 2020 performance. It really doesn't shine a good light on teams from conferences that played fewer games (PAC, B1G). pic.twitter.com/3hHOws1EJF
— College Football Nerds (@CFBNerds) August 17, 2021
The ESPN list also features two coaches remaining on Clemson’s schedule. Florida State’s Mike Norvell sits third with a buyout approaching $51 million, South Carolina’s Shane Beamer appears fifth at $22.5 million. Clemson will face Norvell on Halloween before hosting Beamer in its routine regular-season finale.
College football top 25 rankings: new No. 1 in US LBM Coaches Poll after chaos
— Clemson Wire (@Clemson_Wire) October 11, 2026
📸 Kevin Jairaj, IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect https://t.co/UWOSDN9wEw pic.twitter.com/ibS7uB7Z0l
Swinney is in a strange and annoying position: too accomplished to casually get rid of, far too expensive to remove.
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This article originally appeared on Clemson Wire: ESPN ranks Dabo Swinney among college football’s biggest buyouts
