Pressure on Clemson’s Phillips to land big-time coach

By Marc Hudgens  |   Sunday, October 26, 2008  |  Comments( 2 )

Clemson Tigers
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You’d have to be flat-out blind to argue against the immediate, and positive, impact of the ACC’s new coaching hires over the past two years. In only their first seasons, Paul Johnson has Georgia Tech rolling with its top rushing offense in years and David Cutcliffe has Duke looking its best since dinosaurs roamed the earth. In only his second season in Chapel Hill, Butch Davis is clearly making North Carolina into an ACC title contender. Last year in his first season, Jeff Jagodzinski led Boston College to an Atlantic Division title and subsequent berth in the ACC title game -- do you really think the uber-conservative Tom O’Brien could have done that?

And even though he's not yet a head coach, offensive coordinator and Bobby Bowden's heir apparent, Jimbo Fisher, has finally made his presence felt at Florida State in only his second season. The Seminoles, for the first time in ages, now have a tremendous offense (ranked first in the ACC) and are currently atop the Atlantic Division. Sporting only one loss, Florida State (6-1 overall, 3-1 ACC) controls its own destiny toward a date in Tampa for the conference title game.

With all that in mind, there's pressure in Clemson to find the right successor to the now-gone Tommy Bowden. The Tigers, who are a pitiful 3-4(1-3 ACC), are without a permanent coach; thus, there's a lot of heat on athletic director Terry Don Phillips.

That’s not a slap against interim coach Dabo Swinney, who's done a lot of off-field good in spite of his first loss (to Georgia Tech). But this is a critical time for the Tiger program, too critical to go the cheap-and-easy route again for a head coach. If you look at their résumés prior to Clemson, Ken Hatfield easily had the most credentials going back to Frank Howard. Clearly Clemson has largely hired unproven candidates throughout its history; with today’s ACC landscape, though, does Clemson really want to roll the dice again and hire another unproven in Swinney?

Unfortunately for Clemson, there are hardly any top candidates with loads of head coaching experience out there. During the same past two years, ACC teams were making their moves while Clemson kept giving Bowden chance after chance. Arizona State signed Dennis Erickson, Alabama got Nick Saban, Arkansas snagged Bobby Petrino, Michigan lured Rich Rodriguez and UCLA grabbed Rick Neuheisel. It doesn't help that Tennessee and Auburn will likely be competing with Clemson at season's end. It will be enormously tough for Clemson to make a mind-blowing hire when you consider the lack of top candidates plus competition from bigger programs, but it doesn’t take away from the fact it still needs to.
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About Marc Hudgens

Marc Hudgens has been with RealFootball365 since 2007, covering college football, specifically Clemson and Oregon. He also writes for SouthernPigskin.com covering the ACC. He enjoys the acidic wit of Hunter S. Thompson, is a freelance graphic designer and has written several screenplays. He ...
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