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How does Dabo Swinney Rank as a Coach in 2024? Kelley Ford Discusses · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

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  Kelly Ford k Ford Ratings on Xkford Ratings dot Com is on your radio,
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  Kelly. Welcome in, sir. How are you hey, Jake. I'm
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  doing well today. How are you doing good? Doing really good? As
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  we march towards March Madness, it's going to be fun. We're going to
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  get into some of that in the second segment. Of course, we'll do
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  a lot of that over the next few weeks with you looking at the tournament.
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  I want to talk some college football though, to start out with,
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  and I kind of want to work off, you know, get your thoughts
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  on some of these teams. You know, obviously, I know you still
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  got a long way to go, like the rest of us, working on
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  analytics and what these rosters are going to look like. I saw or somebody
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  on this show, I can't remember who it was I had on the other
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  day, felt like Alabama would probably dip into the portal after spring practice,
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  you know, a considerable amount to try to fill some of these spots.
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  So we'll still have work to get into. But I want to start with
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  Dabo Swinny and Clemson, And the reason I want to bring them up is
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  because Bruce Feldman of the Athletic released his top ten college football coaches, and
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  I don't really know where he you know, what his criteria is. He
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  still has Dabo Swinny as the second best coach in college football. I tend
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  to disagree with that, you know. You know, if you want to
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  say over the life of a career, you might can make that argument.
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  But Clemson and Daboswiney feel like they have a lot of work to do this
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  year to really come, you know, and they'll be right there. We'll
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  see. They played Georgia Week one. This is not the same Clemsoning team
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  we knew five years ago though. Yeah, Jake, I completely agree with
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  you. And to the point of, you know, where does Dabo fall
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  in the current hierarchy of college football head coaches. It does depend on the
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  time frame that you're going to look at, right, I mean, is
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  it are you going back here ten years because if so, yeah, he's
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  got the two national championships and not many coaches can speak to that level of
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  success. Or are you going to judge it more on what have you done
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  in the last three or four years? Five years? And they made a
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  couple of playoffs here within that time frame. But it's certainly fallen off in
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  recent recent years. And if I look, I'm quickly pulling up my preseason
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  expectations from last year because it lists quickly where I had Clemson at the end
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  of each college football season, and I'm looking at kind of where I think
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  they might be here this year. It is possible and even likely Jake,
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  that from a power rating standpoint, this is going to be the worst Clemson
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  team that we've seen since maybe twenty fourteen. So you're going back a decade
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  the last time we've seen a Clemson team. You know, they're probably in
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  that fifteen the twenty range of power ratings if I had to guess right now
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  what it's going to look like this fall, And the last time they were
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  in that range of twenty fourteen, they finished the year number twenty one for
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  me. So they're certainly trending in the wrong direction. But I would also
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  say, Jake, Florida State is really the only team as I quickly look
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  at the ACC composition for next year, and of course it changes with Stanford
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  CALSMU coming in, you know, Florida State's the only team that I'm going
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  to say definitively right now is maybe a higher power rated team than Clemson,
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  and they do have to go to Florida State in the regular season. They
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  do have Georgia in Atlanta to open the year. As you alluded to,
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  sough, tough, tough schedule. They are a tough couple of games,
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  but Clemson's still going to be among the favorite. It's in the ACC.
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  That speaks probably more to the ACC than anything else. But yeah, certainly
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  not the cleansing powerhouse that we've been used to seeing. Really from that twenty
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  fifteen to twenty twenty ish time Brame Kelly Forward talking college football, we'll get
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  some college basketball. Second segment, k Ford Ratings on Exkford ratings dot com.
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  When is the edition of the program? All right, not in the
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  top ten, But I do want to stay in the ACC since you brought
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  up Florida State, and I want to move past Florida State and go to
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  Miami because you know, there's a lot we do know and it's a kind
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  of came through here and I've got my initial you know, strength of schedule
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  rankings for a lot of these teams Miami. When you look at Miami and
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  you kind of depended on what we mean, you've talked about this off the
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  year. How you calculate it. They've got arguably the best roster with Florida
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  State in the in the ACC. They've got the quarterback with cam Ward coming
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  in. Their schedule is very, very manageable, is it? The big
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  thing for me is what about you know, their coaching staff, what about
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  their head coach? I mean because when you look at it at his red
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  you're talking about a guy that's one game over five hundred in his career.
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  Everything. When you look at him, it says, yes, they should
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  compete for this championship this year. You look at the history of Mario Cristobal
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  and Miami over the last several years. That's where what gets in the way.
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  Where are you at way too early with Miami. I think Miami belongs
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  in that top tier in the ACC as well, Jacob, because we mentioned
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  Florida State, we just talked about Clemson. That next team for me,
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  the early look at the power ratings is going to be Miami again the ACC.
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  If I'm if I'm the athletics director at either at any of those three
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  institutions of the ACC, my expectation is that we are going to be in
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  the top three in the conference football standings year in and year out. There's
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  there's really not a lot of excuses to be made for those three programs with
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  their recent and historical success and the resources that they have now. Granted,
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  some have more than others, but those three programs in particular are positions such
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  that I would expect, if I'm an administrator of those universities, that we're
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  going to be competing for the ACC championship year in and year out. In
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  football, You're right, it has not gone to plan at Miami here in
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  recent years. They've been better in recent years. Twenty twenty three they were
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  better than they were in twenty twenty two, of course, a really down
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  year where they finished number seventy in my power rating, a shockingly bad year.
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  But even going back before that, you know, number thirty three,
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  back in twenty twenty one, number eighteen, and twenty twenty, but they
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  haven't finished higher than number eighteen of my power rating since twenty sixteen. I'm
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  not suggesting that this Miami team is going to come into the year in the
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  top twenty, but they could certainly have a team that rounds into form and
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  maybe finds themselves in that fifteen to twenty rage come the end of the year.
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  So it's possible that we could be looking at the best Miami team if
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  everything goes to plan. Since maybe twenty sixteen, Bruce Felman has Lance Leopold
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  on his list at number three. I tend to disagree with that. I
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  mean, I know that his resume is extremely stellar. You look at what
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  he did, you know, back prior to Kansas, when he was at
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  Buffalo and then of course at Wisconsin Whitewater. Unbelievable, you know, resume
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  there. But when I'm gonna take this past lance leopoldough I've said this,
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  I want your thoughts on this. The Big Twelve as it sets, the
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  new Big Twelve could be I think the funnest league to watch because there's no
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  Texas, there's no Oklahoma. They're gonna be in the SEC. Yes,
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  Utah comes over Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State. But you know when you
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  kind of look at Utah, Central Florida. Now they're gonna have kJ Jefferson
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  and they worked at Transfer Portal pretty hard. TCU, Colorado, Texas Tech,
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  Baylor, Kansas State, Oklahoma State. This could be a wide open
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  Big Twelve championship run. Wide open is the exact phrase I would use to
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  describe, not agree more. I personally again a lot of work to be
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  done for the twenty twenty four preseason k Ford ratings. I personally think that
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  right now I'm probably leaning towards Utah as maybe the best power rated team in
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  the new look Big twelves. Of course, they're making their their transition from
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  the pack twelve. Kansas State is up there Arizona. I know they lost
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  Jetfish. I know he's up at Washington now, but what he had started
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  building there in Tucson, Arizona's a team to watch. Don't count out Mike
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  Gundhy in Oklahoma State, they always seem to be in the mix. I'm
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  a big Matt Campbell fan at Iowa State, and they seem to be a
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  team that over a cheese relative to the level at which they recruit. It's
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  wide open. I didn't even get the CCU. Who's in the National Championship
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  game just two years ago. Kansas Lfehold, as you mentioned, has done
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  a complete turnaround. The best two year stretch we've seen at Kansas since two
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  thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. It's a wide open conference.
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  There's no historical traditional blue blood of college football remaining with the departures of Texas
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  and Oklahoma. Somebody or somebodies is going to take this new look conference by
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  the neck and say this is now ours. We now run the Big Twelve,
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  and you could go one of maybe half a dozen ways with who that's
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  going to be. I am very excited to see what the Big Twelve produces
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  this year, Jake, in terms of CFP, because I know that's always
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  the follow up is, well, Kelly, if they have all of these
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  contenders, what does that do for their SEATP chances? We could be in
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  a scenario where, like we used to talk about the Pac twelves, they
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  all beat each other up in the regular season. They got some good teams
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  but didn't really get the opportunity in the playoff except for on a handful of
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  occasions to have a team in the CFP. Well, now with the expanded
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  CFP, the Big Twelve will be representative, of course, but it is
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  possible that you're gonna see you know, four, five six teams from either
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  or the Big Ten the SEC. It's possible we get into years where you've
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  got one, maybe only two teams from the Big Twelve, if there is
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  that much parody, and they all knock each other up and beat each other
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  up throughout the regular season,