Swinney ranks behind Kirby Smart according to CBS

It wasn’t the season Dabo Swinney and the Clemson football program was looking for this past year, as the Tigers failed to live up to the team’s typical expectations.

Though it wasn’t the year they were looking for, Swinney did an excellent job helping the Tigers recover from their rough start, leading the team to yet another double-digit win season for the eleventh straight season and a victory over Iowa State in the Cheez-It Bowl back in December.

You would think one rough season for the Tigers where they would still win double digit games and a bowl game wouldn’t effect Swinney’s ranking as one of the two best head coaches in college football… but according to CBS’ list, it did.

While the Clemson season was just one piece of the puzzle, according to CBS’ recent post ranking the top 25 Power Five college football coaches entering the 2022 season, Swinney has fallen a spot below recent national champion, Georgia’s Kirby Smart.

The list is based on voting by a group consisting of writers from both CBS Sports and 247Sports. They aren’t given a set of guidelines to follow.

Here is what CBS’ Tom Finelli had to say about Swinney’s ranking:

3. Clemson: Dabo Swinney

This is the worst ranking of the year, and it’s nothing but recency bias. There are two coaches in the sport today who have won multiple national titles, and Swinney is one of them. He’s won two at Clemson, but last season, in what’s considered a “down year” by the standards Swinney himself set, the Tigers “only” won 10 games and failed to win the ACC. Nevermind that it was the 11th straight season Swinney’s Clemson team won 10+ games or the first time they’d failed to reach the College Football Playoff since 2014. I don’t mean this as disrespect to Smart, who took Swinney’s spot at No. 2, but this is a failure by my fellow panelists. 2021 rank: 2 (-1)

At least Tom can acknowledge one thing; this is pure recency bias. Kirby Smart jumps Dabo Swinney for the…