CLEMSON — Despite what happens Saturday night at Memorial Stadium, the Clemson Football Program is headed for a major rebuild this off-season.

The question now becomes is Dabo Swinney the right person to pull off a major rebuild? Before I go too deep into the woods on this subject, let me reiterate, I believe Swinney has earned the right to fix the Clemson program.

With that said, can he?

As we all know, the Clemson program has declined little by little since 2021. Yes, it has been good enough to win the ACC, but it has not been good enough to compete nationally.

The Tigers current six-game home losing streak to Power Conference foes is a perfect example of that, as is their 1-4 home record this season – the program’s worst since it had the same record in 1975.

For Clemson to rebuild its program following its worst season since 1998, it will require Dabo Swinney to rethink the way he runs his program. For one, he will need to use the transfer portal heavily, obviously developing high school players is not working as well as it used to.

To do that he will have to entice the best players to come to Clemson with more money. In other words, he will have to go against his idea of not having a new player making more money at a position than the current players at that position. The market value will need to be paid.

Yes, retaining players is still important and has its place, but Swinney has to change some of his beliefs if he is the guy to get Clemson back to where it once was.

It is important that Swinney shows these changes.

Why?

It is hard to sell to big-paying boosters that Clemson needs X number of dollars and Swinney is still doing it his way. They are not going to go for that and that could really hurt the football program and other programs in the athletic department as well.

The athletic department cannot afford to lose any more dollars. Remember, Clemson was counting on more television dollars this year after it settled its lawsuit with the ACC.

With the Tigers sitting at 3-5 and playing on the ACC Network every week, Clemson is drawing almost as much attention to itself as Boston College. In other words, no one cares about the Clemson Tigers right now, and that is not good for business.

Also, did you notice the decline in attendance last week. That’s not good either. That is less concession and beer sells money. It does not sound like much, but it all adds up and it all is hurting the Tigers’ revenue dollars for next season.

It also did not help that two of Clemson’s games were delayed for more than 90-minutes due to lightning and the way Tigers were playing. Most of those fans did not come back into the stadium. Again, hurting the concession and beer dollars.

What really sucks for Clemson when you consider all of this is the fact it will need a jump in NIL dollars to compete for the best players coming out of the portal or from the high school ranks.

Even if Swinney is the guy, does he have enough tools to get Clemson back to where it used to be? That’s the question, isn’t it?