Back in the offseason, one of the most anticipated games in the ACC this season was Clemson traveling to Chapel Hill to play North Carolina.
It was Dabo Swinney vs. Bill Belichick. However, with both teams off to horrid starts, this weekend’s match-up has lost some of its luster.
Clemson limps in at 1-3, while the Tar Hells are sitting at 2-2. Neither team has a win over a Power-4 opponent over the first month of the season.
“I never in my lifetime thought I would get an opportunity to coach against coach Belichick. How cool is that?” Swinney said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “This guy has got eight rings. He is arguably the greatest ever. Certainly at the pro level. I wish we were 4-0, I would feel a little better about it.”
While the two teams are both out of the national spotlight, history will be made on Saturday, as this marks the first time in 32 years, and just the second time ever in college football history, that a multi-time NFL Super Bowl champion coach will face off against a multi-time college FBS national champion coach.
The only other time it’s happened was back in 1993, with the multi-time Super Bowl champ coming away with the win as Bill Walsh’s Stanford team knocked off Joe Paterno’s Penn State team 24-3 in the Blockbuster Bowl.
There is no denying that both coaches have experienced a lot of success, but that might be where the comparison stops. Swinney has always been known as the eternal optimist, while Belichick has always been considered a little more standoffish.
When the two coaches got to spend some time together back in the summer, Swinney got to see a side of Belichick the public rarely sees. Belichick even sent Swinney a text of encouragement before the start of the season.
“He just is who he is,” Swinney said. “He is a really nice man. I know he has a persona that he has probably earned, but he is a really nice guy. He is smart. I was so impressed with him. He was very inquisitive. He asked a lot of questions that were very basic questions. He just hadn’t been in college, and I think he just really wanted to understand. That is one of the reasons he has been very successful.”
There will certainly be plenty of attention on each of the head coaches in the lead-up to and during the game, but at its core, this is a matchup of two teams badly in need of a win, with Swinney insisting that his Tigers might even need it a little more.
“I wish him all the best, except for this weekend,” Swinney said, laughing. “I mean, we need a win… a lot worse than he does. We need a win in a big way.”
Photo by Bob Donnan-Imagn Images