Happy preseason poll day to all who observe. The Associated Press released its first preseason poll of the 2026 season. College football fans—and of course South Carolina fans alike—will likely notice one thing about the initial rankings. The Clemson Tigers are starting the season unranked.
Despite Dabo Swinney and Clemson's two national championships, and Swinney having 187 career wins, the Tigers were left off of the preseason poll for the first time since 2011. It came as a bit of a surprise, as Swinney and Clemson were ranked No. 23 overall in the USA Today Coaches' Poll, which was released a couple of weeks ago. The Tigers received 112 voting points, five points shy of No. 25 Missouri.
Clemson is unranked in the preseason poll for the first time since 2011 👀 pic.twitter.com/7UJOahkCun
— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) August 17, 2026
The Tigers are coming off of a 7-6 season in 2025, the worst finish for Swinney since 2010. That year was Clemson's only season below .500 under Swinney. The Tigers actually finished that regular season at 6-6, but the 31-26 loss to South Florida in the Meineke Car Care Bowl dropped them to 6-7.
To say that 2026 is a critically important season for Swinney is an understatement. The head coach is entering his 19th season at Clemson, and is still one of college football's winningest coaches in the sport's history. But the Tigers have fallen out of the national spotlight in recent years. Clemson's 9-4 finish in 2023 marked the first season with more than three losses for the first time since 2011. That year, the Tigers bounced back from 6-7 and finished 10-4, capped off with a trip to the Orange Bowl.
In 2024, Clemson just barely made it into the College Football Playoff, winning the ACC Championship over SMU. The Tigers were considered out of the CFP conversation when South Carolina upset Clemson on the road. But thanks to Miami losing to Syracuse that week, Clemson went to the ACC title game instead of the Canes. The Tigers lost 38-24 to Texas in the CFP first round in a game that wasn't as close as the final score suggests.
Yes, Clemson won it all in 2016 and 2018, playing for two more national titles in 2015 and 2019. But the Tigers also haven't advanced past the first round of the CFP since the 2019-20 season. Until the 2024 berth, Clemson also hadn't played in the ACC title game since 2022.
Swinney has refused to evolve with two critical components of the sport
Swinney has also been publicly resistant to embracing two of the biggest changes college football has seen in the last 10 years—using NIL money to recruit and the transfer portal. He publicly stated that his 2022 recruiting class was built using "God's name, image and likeness." Although he has in recent years done somewhat of a 180, stating he wants to pay players but is against professionalizing college athletics.
He has also used the transfer portal sparingly, adding backup quarterbacks Hunter Johnson and Paul Tyson in 2022 and 2023, and adding four players in 2025. Those classes are much smaller than the usual portal class of 10-15 players most programs bring in.
“I’m just for the guys that we have,” Swinney said via The Associated Press as recently as July 2024 of his approach with the transfer portal.
“If I took a job somewhere else, I’d be the greatest portal recruiter ever because half of my roster would be gone and I’d have to put it together,” Swinney continued. “But if you study our team, our retention is as good as anybody in the country. Guys graduate, they stay, and we recruit.”
2026 marked his biggest transfer portal class yet, landing 11 guys, including big names like SMU running back Chris Johnson Jr., Oklahoma defensive lineman Markus Strong and Colorado EDGE rusher London Merrett.
As for Clemson's 2026 schedule, Swinney will face off in Week 1 against a head coach who can be viewed as the complete antithesis of the Tiger head coach, in LSU's Lane Kiffin. Not only Kiffin has dominated both NIL recruiting and the transfer portal at a school with far fewer resources in Ole Miss, he's embraced all of it. In 2022, he dubbed himself the transfer portal king. Since arriving in Baton Rouge, he's stated that LSU's NIL success has helped build an elite roster in just a few short months.
Clemson plays LSU on the road, but also has notable ACC games against Cal, Miami, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Georgia Tech and Duke. Clemson will end the season against Shane Beamer and a rebuilding Gamecocks team, which has actually beaten the Tigers in each of the last two meetings in Clemson. Swinney also didn't exactly inject confidence in his team when he said just last week that his team is "full of nobodies" when asked if there were any early standouts.
What will it take for Clemson to move on from Swinney?
Swinney's buyout is reportedly $57 million, down $60 million from last season. It's hard to imagine Clemson moving on from a head coach that's winning percentage is among giants like Bear Bryant, Nick Saban and Bob Stoops.
It might take a losing season at Clemson for the school to finally move on from Swinney, and you could see an eight or nine-win season giving him one more year. But in a world where Penn State was willing to pay James Franklin, the school's second-winningest head coach, $49 million (that's since been reduced to $9 million thanks to his new Virginia Tech job) to leave, anything is possible.
Only time will tell if Swinney can engineer another turnaround season at Clemson like he did in 2011. For now, one preseason poll doesn't have a lot of faith in the Tigers for now.
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