Though he does not have a close relationship with Will Muschamp, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney feels for the former South Carolina head coach and his family.

Muschamp was fired Sunday evening after the Gamecocks lost a third straight game by double digits at Ole Miss. South Carolina fell to 2-5 on the season, this after coming off a 4-8 season in 2019.

“He has kids. He has a wife. I know it is a passion for a lot of people, but this is our livelihood, and it is what we have invested our lives in,” Swinney said during his call-in show Monday night. “My heart breaks for him. I understand. I get it. But certainly, my thoughts are with he and his family. The Good Lord will open up another door somewhere and they will hire a great coach down there and so forth, but it is the really tough part of this business that is for sure.”

In Muschamp’s five seasons at South Carolina, the Gamecocks were 28-30, including a 17-22 record in the SEC.

“He has always been well respected in this profession as a great coach. We compete against each other and obviously that is our rival and all of that, but these are lives. I am not the person who is cheering that someone lost their job,” Swinney said. “It is a very tough business, as we all know, and as coaches, we all know we are only good as your last game or certainly year to year. It is not something you enjoy seeing.”

Swinney was 4-0 against Muschamp in head-to-head matchups and won the four games by an average of 32.3 points. Muschamp’s four losses are the most by a South Carolina head coach without a win.

And though they are not close, Swinney said he has always been appreciative to how open Muschamp was to him and his staff when they visited Texas back in 2009, when he was Mack Brown’s defensive coordinator at the time.

“We have been around each other a few times and mostly have competed against each other. He was at Auburn and I was at Alabama. He was at LSU and vice versa,” Swinney said. “Probably the most time I spent with him was when he was at Texas and I went with our staff and he was incredibly gracious with his time. He was super nice. He was really, really helpful. He spent a lot of time with our staff and that is probably the most I had been around Will.

“The rest of the time it was always just a competitive environment and stuff.”

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