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What Clemson football's Dabo Swinney said about Bill Belichick becoming UNC coach
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- What Clemson football's Dabo Swinney said about Bill Belichick becoming UNC coach
CLEMSON — Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was among the many who were shocked to see Bill Belichick come to college football.
Belichick, 72, became North Carolina's football coach on Dec. 11 a season after parting ways with the NFL's New England Patriots in January. He has 333 wins, nine Super Bowl appearances and six Super Bowl wins during 29 seasons as an NFL head coach, but he has never coached at the collegiate level. His college football experience is limited to his time as a player at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in the 1970s.
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"It's amazing. It's incredible," Swinney said. "It's a great compliment to our league. It's hard to get better than Coach Belichick."
Swinney said he met Belichick once at a 2015 pro day Clemson held. Swinney added he attended the 2017 Super Bowl in Minneapolis and 2018 Super Bowl in Atlanta to watch former Clemson tight end Dwayne Allen , who was playing for the Patriots, compete for a championship.
Clemson will play Belichick and North Carolina next season on the road. It will be the first time in the program's history that the Tigers will face a former Super Bowl-winning head coach. Barry Switzer's final game at Oklahoma was Citrus Bowl loss to Clemson in 1989, six years before he won a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys .
"That wasn't on my radar coming into the season," Swinney said. "The guy that has more Super Bowl wins than anybody is coming to our league."
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Dabo Swinney on Clemson facing Texas on the road, CFP stakes
No. 12 seed Clemson will face No. 5 seed Texas on the road on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, TNT) at Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium. The venue holds 100,119 people, which is the eighth most in the sport.
The Tigers are one of eight FBS teams with an undefeated record on the road this season after finishing 4-0. They are also 0-2 against SEC teams this year, losing to Georgia and South Carolina. One of these streaks will end Saturday.
MORE: Is Clemson's Jay Haynes playing vs. Texas in CFP? Latest injury update
"It's gonna be like a normal road game times a million because this is a playoff game. You're 'gone fishin'' if you lose this one, as Charles Barkley likes to say. This is you win, you keep going. You lose, you're done."
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The winner advances to play No. 4 seed Arizona State, the Big 12 champion, in the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 1 (1 p.m. ET, ESPN).
According to ESPN Analytics, Clemson has a 15.6% chance to beat Texas, the lowest of any team in the first round. Swinney's team has embraced being the underdog this season, defeating SMU in the ACC championship on Dec. 7 to make the CFP despite having low odds to win.
The Tigers will be underdogs again against the Longhorns , who are tied for the No. 25 scoring offense and have the No. 2 scoring defense.
"They're good enough to win the whole thing for sure, without a doubt," Swinney said. "This is a team that I don't know what odds are, whatever, (but) they're probably as good as anybody when it comes to a chance to win the whole thing."
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Derrian Carter covers Clemson athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at dcarter@gannett.com and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DerrianCarter00
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney talks with New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick during Pro Day at Clemson Thursday, March 5, 2015.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Clemson football: Dab Swinney on Bill Belichick becoming UNC coach
