CBS Sports took a look at 26 of “the most mind-blowing stats” entering the 2026 college football season – including one about Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.
CBS Sports listed Swinney under the “coaching greatness” category of stats, pointing out that Swinney’s number of national championship game appearances (four) are more than any other active coach.
“Swinney’s run at Clemson will never be forgotten, even as the NIL and transfer portal era has leveled the playing field a bit in recent years,” CBS Sports’ Brad Crawford wrote. “At one point in Clemson’s climb, the Tigers won 12 or more games for five consecutive seasons and finished inside the top four of the final rankings every year from 2015 through the 2020 campaign. Both of Swinney’s national championships came against Saban and Alabama. It was a stretch that rivaled the ACC’s best ever, previously displayed by Bobby Bowden at Florida State from 1992 to 2000.”
As Crawford touched on, Swinney has guided Clemson to remarkable success and taken the program to new heights as the Tigers’ head coach, accumulating 187 wins, two national championships (2016, 2018) and a slew of ACC titles.
Now entering his 19th season (and 18th full season) as Clemson’s head coach in 2026, Swinney is the program’s all-time winningest coach, the winningest coach in ACC history and the first coach to lead the Tigers to multiple national championships. The Tigers have won nine ACC Championships under Swinney, including eight in the last 11 seasons (and six straight from 2015-20), while he has led Clemson to seven College Football Playoff appearances (including six straight from 2015-20).
Swinney and Georgia’s Kirby Smart are the only active coaches with multiple national titles. Clemson’s most recent national title game appearance came at the end of the 2019 season, when Swinney’s Tigers lost to the LSU Tigers, 42-25.
Clemson most recently made the College Football Playoff in 2024, the inaugural year of the 12-team playoff, when Clemson lost its CFP first-round matchup on the road against Texas, 38-24.
In 13 of the last 15 years, Swinney’s Clemson program has won 10-plus games, though the Tigers have won fewer than 10 in two of the last three years.
Now, the Tigers head into the upcoming campaign hoping to bounce back from a 7-6 record in 2025, the second-worst season in Swinney’s tenure at Clemson. It was an extremely disappointing year, especially considering the Tigers were a preseason top-four team that was expected to win the ACC once again and compete for another national championship.
Clemson will open the 2026 campaign against LSU on Sept. 5 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. (7:30 p.m., ABC).