ESPN personality and vocal Clemson critic Paul Finebaum stirred up some Clemson fans once again last week when he was asked to name the most annoying fan base he deals with on a regular basis, and he singled out Tiger fans first and foremost.
“Overall? Clemson fans are just absurd,” Finebaum told Brooks Austin. “Because they think they’re relevant. I get asked a couple times a year, what do you think about Dabo Swinney? And my answer’s the same, and they all start tweeting, ‘Oh man, Dabo Swinney living rent free in Paul Finebaum’s brain.’
“Now, Dabo Swinney is not living rent free in any – I mean, Shane Beamer is beating this guy.”
On The Paul Finebaum Show this week, Finebaum attempted to clarify those comments about Clemson fans, while taking more shots at Swinney’s program and the fan base in the process.
“Brooks Austin, ‘The Film Guy,’ asked me who the most annoying fan base is. Which, by the way, there are probably 15 or 20 answers,” Finebaum said. “I landed on Clemson, and naturally, the Clemson fanatics who are thin-skinned, insecure and ready to pounce on a slight at the drop of a hat immediately went crazy aggregating my comments as if I just woke up, rolled out of bed and called a news conference to attack Clemson. It was a throwaway line. Didn’t really mean anything by it. I was asked a question by Brooks. So, uh, Clemson Nation is in meltdown because they have nothing to really rally around.”
“They’ve become an average program,” Finebaum added. “They’re living in the past. And I think you know all the rest.”
Finebaum never shies away from opportunities to diss Swinney, and Finebaum once again did so during a recent appearance on Get Up, saying that Swinney is “stuck on stupid.”
“I am getting so exasperated listening to Dabo tell us how great he used to be. They’re not great anymore,” Finebaum said. “You don’t hear [Tom] Brady talking about his Super Bowls. Dabo is just stuck on stupid right now, trying to convince us that his program is still legitimate. It’s not. It’s slipping and sliding away. It’s good. Maybe they’ll win nine games this year or maybe they won’t. But they lost six games last year with the Heisman favorite (Cade Klubnik). That is downright embarrassing.”
On his show this week, Finebaum took another dig at Clemson fans, saying the “stuck on stupid” comment doesn’t just apply to the Tigers’ longtime head coach.
“I used this line about a week ago, I said Dabo Swinney was ‘stuck on stupid.’ That pretty much applies to all of his fans as well,” Finebaum said.
Despite his usual criticisms, Finebaum was on the Clemson hype train entering last season, even going so far as to say that he thought the Tigers were “a legitimate contender for the national championship.”
Of course, Clemson was ranked No. 4 in the preseason AP Poll and had national title aspirations going into the 2025 season, only to end up at 7-6, the second-worst record in Swinney’s tenure.
With Clemson’s struggles a year ago, Finebaum changed his tune back to normal and had plenty to say about the Tigers and Swinney over the course of the disappointing campaign as the program failed to live up to the lofty preseason expectations.
While Finebaum was surprisingly high on Clemson entering the 2025 season, that certainly isn’t the case heading into 2026.
Finebaum says “nothing about” Swinney’s program — which won six straight ACC titles from 2015-20 while making six straight College Football Playoff appearances during the same span and winning national titles in 2016 and 2018 – is “worth promoting” anymore.
“Dabo is so played out, and my biggest beef with Dabo isn’t the fact that he’s a barely average coach anymore,” Finebaum said. “It’s just the pomposity of having to remind everyone what he used to do. Greatness does not equate telling everybody that you were once great.”
“[Clemson fans are] living in a finite period of time between 2015 and 2021 when Clemson was relevant,” Finebaum added. “They’re not anymore, and they just can’t get past it. Last year, I bought into the revival. [Cade] Klubnik, all these great defensive [players]. I had a friend who was connected to the program, and he said the defense was going to be the best in the country, and I believed it. They were terrible. Nothing about that program is really worth promoting.”