Scott Drew and Dabo Swinney coach different sports, but in many ways they have similar career trajectories. Both had doubts and pushback early in their tenures, and both were deeply rooted in Christianity as a vital part of their coaching brands as they pushed their programs toward the impossible, ultimately breaking through to national championships and solidifying their status as the best of their respective eras.
Drew and Swinney also found their program’s luster fading in the age of name, image and likeness, even as their employers rewarded past success with huge contract investments in head coaches.
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Baylor, a small private school in Waco without a large donor base, has stalled in the second round of the NCAA tournament four straight years since winning the 2021 title. Clemson, more of a boutique regional power without the national clout of most of football’s elite, was clearly the second-best program in the country from 2015 to 2020 but hasn’t finished a top-10 season since.
But this past weekend, Drew and Swinney found themselves at opposite ends of the spectrum, illustrating just how complicated the era of college sports has become.
Baylor basketball is 9-2 but not yet ranked in league play that begins this weekend, and Drew crossed a threshold by signing center James Nnaji, a former 31st overall pick in the NBA draft who has spent the past few years playing professionally in Europe. He will play immediately due to the NCAA’s shockingly relaxed stance on eligibility this year.
“Most coaches are 99 percent in agreement with what we want to accomplish in the game,” Drew told reporters. “At the same time, from what I understand, I don’t think we can develop acceptable and enforceable rules until we have collective bargaining. Until then, I think we all have to be prepared to adjust and adapt to what’s out there… We don’t make the rules, and when we see problems, we always make adjustments to put our program in the best position to succeed, because that’s what we get paid to do.”
Baylor head coach Scott Drew received a lot of criticism for bringing in James Nagy. (Getty Images)
(Grant Halvorson via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, as Clemson fell to Penn State 22-10 in the Pinstripe Bowl to end the season 7-6, Swinney’s reaction to one of the most disappointing teams in the country took on a much different tone.
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Over the past few years, Swinney has been heavily criticized by Clemson fans and the media for his unwillingness to embrace the transfer portal culture and his unyielding loyalty to the players and coaches the Clemson system has produced, and he has been criticized for how much he invests in his players as men rather than just people who can help him win games.
“This is my mission in life,” Swinney said. Advertisement
It’s a fascinating contrast. Drew and Swinney are both in their 50s and have content on their resumes that should give their programs some control. Instead, they essentially had to relearn how to do their jobs under a completely different set of rules than those of college sports at the height of their powers.
Swinney was very candid in saying that he cared more about winning the way he thought was right than any nasty compromises he had to make to keep his program relevant. Drew admits that he has chosen a different path, one rooted in the reality of a system in which the rules as we know them no longer exist and his responsibility lies primarily with serving fans and a government that pays him a hefty salary to bring entertainment products to market.
Dabo Swinney and Clemson are 7-6 on the season. Only once during Swinney’s 18-year tenure did the Tigers lose six or more games. (John Byram/Getty Images)
(Icon Sports Wire via Getty Images)
Even if you believe Swinney has the more moral argument, there’s no doubt which coach will put themselves in a better position to succeed when they reach the later stages of their careers. Ask yourself: What is the purpose of this whole thing? Is it to reach an imaginary standard that no longer has much to do with college sports, or is it to accept that as long as everyone follows the rules, the scoreboard is the ultimate judge of who is right and who is wrong?
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Swinney may have gotten into coaching because he wanted to help boys become men, but he’d do well to remember that’s not why he became Clemson’s $11 million-a-year head coach. If he can’t do what’s necessary to win a championship, he should hand over the keys and find a good D-II program to coach where he can make a difference in his life without having to adapt to the de facto rules of professional sports.
But interestingly, Drew has received more criticism, including from within his own profession.
Even Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, who has a friendly relationship with Drew, questioned the decision to recruit Nagy during a press conference Saturday.
“I’m a little surprised,” Izzo said. “I called Scott. I was curious to see what he was going to tell me. I’m not saying we’re holier-than-thou or that anybody shouldn’t do this or that, but if we’re digging into this, if, like I’m hearing, right now we’re drafting players in the NBA draft and so forth, come on, Magic [Johnson] and gary [Harris]let’s go, baby. let’s do it. why not? I mean, if this is what we’re going through, shame on the NCAA. The coaches are ashamed, too, but so is the NCAA. But I think the coaches will do what they have to do. “
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Privately, some coaches were more harsh in their criticism of Drew in conversations with Yahoo Sports. They argued that the decision to recruit a proven professional basketball player who was almost a first-round pick in the NBA draft posed an existential threat to the sport and should be banned, no matter how loose the rules, because NCAA officials feared being taken to court. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
But the battle for the soul of college sports has actually been settled. Swinney’s worldview is lost. We can debate the reasons and long for Congress to step in and pass laws to fix it all, rewinding the clock to 15 years ago when the big debate was whether colleges should pay athletes thousands of dollars in “cost of attendance” stipends.
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This won’t happen. Amateurism was tested — literally and figuratively — and failed because of the NCAA’s own arrogance and legal incompetence. Trying to hang on will only lead to a fan base like Clemson now angry about five years of steady decline and desperately hoping that their two-time national champion coach will either wake up to reality or move on before he does enough damage that the school is forced to fire him.
Meanwhile, Drew gave his fans hope last week. While the details may not matter to some, the fact is that Baylor’s plans this season are built around Robert Wright playing point guard after a stellar freshman year and Juslin Bodo Bodo, a transfer from High Point, protecting the rim.
That team never showed up. Despite turning down other point guards because they believed Wright would be one of their best players, he abruptly left to join BYU in April. Bodo, meanwhile, is still recovering from an arm injury he suffered over the summer.
What should Drew do, give up on the season? No. He found another way to join the roster and was cleared by the NCAA, giving his current team the best chance of a successful season and the program’s stakeholders the best chance of a return on their investment.
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This is work. Drew is not working in the best interest of college basketball, and he certainly isn’t working for Izzo. He works for Baylor and has no reason to feel guilty about doing everything within the rules to regain championship glory.
Especially when the alternative is a program like Clemson, the coach gets caught in a downward spiral, clinging to a delusion and forgetting that when he walked into the athletic director’s office after winning a national championship and asked for a big raise, it wasn’t his passion for social development that got them to say yes.
