Sports

Clemson’s Biggest Achievement This Football Season Was Off The Field

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by
Dabo Swinney Clemson Football head coach

Getty Image / Jacob Kupferman


The Clemson Tigers and Dabo Swinney had an uncharacteristically tough football season where the Tigers were only able to secure 8 wins and they broke a 7-game win streak against rival FSU (FSU leads the rivalry all time 21-15).

But, on Wednesday, Clemson Tigers proved that success can come off the field. ‘Graduation Rate’ was trending on X (formerly Twitter) and Clemson’s Assistant Athletic Director for Football Communications, Ross Taylor, was among the people boasting about Clemson‘s latest achievement.

The Tigers set a new program record this season for Graduation Success Rate (GSR) with 99% for the football program. According to Ross Taylor, this is “the highest GSR score for any Power Five football program since the 2018-19 release, and the highest ever recorded among public Power Five football programs in the 19 years the NCAA has tracked the metric.”

Other metrics worth boasting about from the press release are:

  • Clemson’s department rate of 97 percent leads the nation among all public institutions and is fifth in the nation among all Power Five programs, public or private.
  • Clemson set a department record with 10 programs that earned perfect 100 percent scores for the cohort – baseball, men’s basketball, men’s golf, men’s tennis, women’s basketball, women’s golf, women’s soccer, women’s cross country/track, softball, and volleyball.

These are incredible accomplishments and speak to the importance of a well-rounded experience at Clemson versus all of the onus being placed on athletic success.

This season wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Clemson Football team, however. They were able to pull off an 8-4 season and will face the Kentucky Wildcats in the Gator Bowl.

They are, however, struggling a bit on the recruiting front. As things stand, Clemson Football and Dabo Swinney have the nation’s #17 recruiting class with two 5*, 9 4*, and 7 3* recruits.

That’s a noticeable drop off from recent years. From 2015 to 2022, the Tigers’ recruiting class only once fell outside the top 10 according to Rivals.