An 'Unexpected' Rivalry: Fun with Swinney and Saban
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney and Alabama head coach Nick Saban have gotten to be very familiar with each other over the last three years.
Both coaches seem to be almost opposites. Swinney dances in the locker room after victories, while you rarely ever see a Saban smile.
With the Sugar Bowl being the site for another Clemson-Alabama heavyweight fight, the meeting between the two has become sort of a reunion.
Saban and Swinney both attended the press conference for all four College Football Playoff head coaches just before the College Football Awards in Atlanta last week.
They sat side-by-side fielding questions while looking on at the national championship trophy.
In his opening statement, Swinney wasted no time having a little fun.
“Obviously, I can't seem to get away from these guys, as hard as I try (smiling),” Swinney said. “Man, it's not an easy task to play Alabama. I don't care where you put them, they've had the best team for a long time.”
While he may have been joking that he has been trying to get away from the Tide, Swinney was confronted by a question regarding where he voted Alabama in the final polls.
As it turned out, Swinney voted Ohio State fourth in his coach’s poll while placing Alabama just outside the top four. He was asked if he felt Ohio State was worthy of the playoff spot instead of Saban's Tide.
“3:00 in the morning on a bus ride home from Charlotte,” Swinney said. “A moment of insanity, complete insanity (smiling).”
“He was disrespecting his alma mater, that’s all,” Saban added with a quick laugh.
As the evening wore on, the fun continued between the two. This time, the cameras weren’t rolling.
Saban and Swinney were talking after the press conference, and Saban asked if he was going to stay for the College Football Awards show.
“I was messing with him,” Swinney said Wednesday night. “I was like, ‘no, we didn’t have anybody good enough to win any of these awards this year.
‘It was kind of a ‘rebuilding year’ for us. Maybe next year we’ll have somebody good enough to win one of them awards.’”
Awesome.
Even with Clemson back on top of the college football world, Swinney still has a perennial chip on his shoulder.
Swinney shares a similar kind of relationship with previous South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier. When Spurrier was at South Carolina, the two rival head coaches exchanged various jabs at each other.
Saban hasn’t gotten into the spats with Swinney that Spurrier did, but there is still an unquestionable rivalry between the two coaches and the two teams.
Swinney said Wednesday night that the matchup between Clemson and Alabama has become an unexpected rivalry.
“Sometimes rivalries kind of pop up that you don’t expect. Somehow or another they happen in sports, and I think that has happened here,” Swinney said. “There’s a really great respect from both sides. I know Alabama people have great respect for good football. They might not necessarily like you, but they recognize good football, and effort, toughness.”
The two head coaches may be very different in how they conduct themselves and their programs, but they both share one unique similarity:
Both have dominant programs and share a great mutual respect for what the other has done.
After all, each coach has gotten the better of the other in the last two years on the biggest stage.
“We’ve won 61 games in five years, and we got a chance to tie Alabama. They’ve got 62,” Swinney said. “I don’t think there is any question that some point down the road; we’ll look back at this decade and take great pride in it… We have developed a kind of consistency that is hard to achieve.”
Both coaches have shown the culture and consistency it takes to be a national power in college football.
The fun, the preparation, and build-up will continue with New Year’s Day still being weeks away.
It’ll be a shame that this game between these two coaches won’t be for another national title.