ESPN play-by-play commentator and former WCCP-FM personality Roy Philpott recently joined fellow Clemson alums Kelly Gramlich and Eric Mac Lain on the Gramlich & Mac Lain show’s Summer Guest Series.

Philpott was asked a question about Dabo Swinney – specifically, does Philpott feel like the longtime Clemson head coach has been reinvigorated a little bit and is fine with where college football is right now in today’s landscape with the transfer portal, etc.?

Does Philpott think the 55-year-old Swinney still has a lot of years left ahead of him in coaching?

As he answered the question, Philpott recalled meeting with Swinney in his office the week of last year’s South Carolina game, when Philpott was preparing to call the game for ESPN.

Philpott remembers wondering at the time, “Is this something Coach Swinney is going to be doing five or 10 years from now?”

“I never ever would have thought I would have said it,” Philpott said to Gramlich and Mac Lain. “It wasn’t that the joy was gone, but I think that there was a lot of criticism last year at various moments. ‘You’re not in the portal. Has the game passed Clemson by?’ All that, that narrative was still out there. And even after the South Carolina game, that was out there and people were banging that drum.

“And I kind of questioned it for a moment, too. And then all of a sudden they win the ACC Championship. [Nolan] Hauser buries the 56-yard field goal, and they’re in the playoff. They’re at Texas, and you can kind of see the spark come back quickly. And then they kind of dabbled in the portal a little bit, and things started to change. And then [Cade] Klubnik kind of did his thing a little bit more after that, and I think [Swinney is] back in it, man.”

Philpott added that heading into the 2025 season, “it’s a different Dabo than it was at the end of last year.”

“You can hear that in his tone, in his body language, in every box that you could potentially check for a head coach,” Philpott said.

“I think he’s reinvigorated,” Philpott continued. “I think he’s re-energized. … The Dabo I hear now and I see now reminds me of the Dabo that we used to talk to back at (WCCP) in 2016. You do the math on what that equates to.”