Dabo Swinney A Candidate For Florida Football Coach?

A lot of us joked about it in the past few days, but the national rumor mill has now begun speculating that Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney is a candidate for the recently open Florida job. The rumors have gotten bad enough that Swinney had to address them after practice on Wednesday. His comments mentioned the fact that no one has contacted him and that he is focused on Clemson right now.

It is a rather interesting choice of words for Dabo, and it may give a clue to his thoughts on the position. While he may not take or even be offered the Florida job, he hasn't ruled it out yet. Normally in these situations a coach would say he has no interest in the job and that he hasn't been contacted. Instead he omitted the bit about not having interest, or at least none of the papers are reporting it. That makes me think it might be an option in Dabo's mind, even though he seems to be extremely happy at Clemson.

And let's make no mistake here, Dabo should listen to Florida if they want to talk about their job opening. Florida is probably one of the 3-4 best jobs in college football. Alabama, Texas, and possible USC are the only places where a coach may pass on the opportunity to coach Florida. It has access to a lot of good recruits, a stupid amount of money, and possibly some of the best facilities in the country in 3-4 years.

For Clemson fans, Dabo taking the job would provide a nice little out, especially if Dabo fails to beat South Carolina for the 6th straight year. The Tigers would not have to spend a single penny on the ridiculous buyout attached to Dabo's contract, and it would allow them to go after someone who could revamp the strength and conditioning, recruit in a more efficient manner, and possibly have a functioning OL. Plus we could possibly beat South Carolina again, that would be rather nice.