Can Clemson’s four-year slide be boiled down into a single preposterous decision by Dabo Swinney?

Watching Clemson in the second half Saturday was like watching ice cream left out in the sun. In both cases the result was inevitable — a slow, messy meltdown.  

At least ice cream leaves a puddle, a reminder of what once was. The Tigers left questions, along with a stench that contributed to a lot of empty seats at the end of a much-worse-than-it-looked 33-21 loss to Louisville.

All of it was a reminder that Clemson isn’t back and, judging from Saturday, won’t be any time soon. 

You see, the standard under Dabo Swinney is a College Football Playoff berth at the least. There was always the expectation of a championship contender, if not outright national championship.

That’s the Tigers’ standard for themselves. They created it. It comes from within.

But that standard is gone, or at least significantly diminished. A loss to a team Clemson had never lost to — at home, at night in Death Valley — begged a larger question.  Is Clemson done competing for championships under Dabo Swinney?

The season started out sketchy with a listless loss to Georgia. But then Clemson seemed to get its mojo back winning six in a row. Saturday was a no-show. The Tigers were No. 23 in the first CFP rankings of the year Tuesday night. 

Hey, it happens. Anyone who watched Alabama venture to Vanderbilt can understand. These are still 18-22 year olds. But there isn’t the excuse of NIL dollars tearing apart a locker room at Clemson. At least not as much as one since Dabo still holds to his no-portal philosophy. 

And over the last two months that often-criticized philosophy was working. Now? Fire away, critics. 

Dabo is 54, one of the most accomplished coaches in the profession. But it’s weird. At 54, Nick Saban had won a national championship at LSU and was headed to a disappointing run with the Miami Dolphins. 

There is plenty of time to rebound. The 12-team playoff is more inclusive, though it’s probably not in the cards this season unless Clemson gets major help to get to the ACC Championship Game, and then win it. Clemson isn’t bad. It just can’t live up to its own lofty standard. At that point in his career, Saban had accomplished less. 

So there’s that. 

This is not to take away from Louisville. Jeff Brohm came home to win games like this. Last year’s 10-win season was Louisville’s first in a decade. 

Clemson is a better program. It is/was a national power. It’s also hard to believe it has been four years since Clemson was even in the CFP, six years since it won second of its two CFP championships.

Another run now looks unlikely. After a second loss Saturday, Clemson can’t seemingly live up to its own standard (see above). So don’t even hint at now being happy with a just-glad-to-be-here CFP berth. 

At this point Clemson would almost have to back into that spot. SMU and Miami, both undefeated in the league, look to be barreling toward the ACC Championship Game. 

“We don’t control our destiny anymore which is really sad,” Clemson safety R.J. Mickens said. 

The answer to being down 17-7 at half to Louisville should have been urgency. Instead, Clemson fell behind further, by as many as 19 points. It ran the ball too much, lolly-gagged between plays and substituted personnel way too much to keep any tempo going. Then Swinney making an absolutely staggering decision with six minutes left that should confirm a lot of suspicions. 

A Phil Mafah touchdown had just cut the Louisville lead to 26-13. ESPN announcers, whose employer gave the ACC billions for the right to basically say good things about teams on game day, were aghast. 

“This doesn’t make any sense,” play-by-play voice Bob Wischusen said as Clemson lined up for an extra point. The Tigers fans who were left at Memorial Stadium protested in their seats, holding up two fingers to beg Swinney — to maybe even catch his attention — to change his mind. 

A glimmer of hope for Clemson turned into disbelief in the broadcast booth. 

“I don’t understand in any way, shape or form the decision not to go for two there,” Wischusen added. “You’re running out of time,” Wischusen said. “You need to keep a field goal in play as one of the scores you need. The only way that a field goal factors into one of the scores you need in the last six minutes is to go for two there, cut the lead down to 11, and then you need eight more and a three. And instead, now they’re down by 12.”

He was absolutely right. A successful two-point conversion makes it 26-15. Eleven points. The difference for Clemson then would have been a touchdown, a two-point conversion and field goal. An extra point meant Clemson had to score two touchdowns to win.  

“We talked about it, and all of our charts said, ‘Go for one right there,'” Swinney told reporters. 

Very simply, Dabo, you need new charts — and maybe somebody on your staff to push back when you’re going down the wrong hill. 

When Clemson was ruled not to have recovered the onside kick, the crowd peppered the field with water bottles. Unlike, Texas-Georgia, the move did not cause officials to reverse the call. 

Yeah, maybe it’s a little thing considering Clemson never got within one score anyway, but when Clemson has now lost at least two games for the fifth straight season, it’s certainly something. Fans certainly took note of their coach being asleep at the wheel. There’s one indicator of how far Clemson has slipped from its own standard. 

A 46-14 record since 2020 would be outstanding for 95% of FBS. In Saturday’s aftermath it has become less about Clemson making the playoff than standing in front of a mirror and asking, “Where do we go from here?”

For more evidence look at those two teams now favored for Charlotte, Miami and SMU. The Hurricanes are seemingly content with outscoring everyone. That’s their identity. They embrace it. The philosophy has worked so far. They’re one of five undefeated teams left.

You want urgency? SMU is still finding ways to come up with the full $250 million it will take to fund athletics in the next five years. The urgency was already there. SMU was willing to do anything to be in this position. They showed it by trading entry into the big time in exchange for not taking a dime of media rights money for their first nine years in the league.

SMU is in a position to make the swiftest, best, boldest year-over-year transition from the Group of Five to the Power Four in the history of realignment. 

It’s that kind of out-of-the-box thinking that makes great teams, corporations and countries. Meanwhile, Clemson is still living in a bygone world where its mere name could scare teams into submission during the warmup.

Those days seem gone. Now Dabo and the Tigers are looking up at the bracket wondering where it all went wrong. 

Start with two blocked field goals Saturday. Or a defense that ranks No. 95 against the run. Brent Venables is not walking through that door … yet. 

Clemson did score twice in the fourth quarter but it took a total of 28 plays and almost nine combined minutes off the clock to make that run.  

Mike Tyson used to say everyone had a plan until they got punched in the mouth. The way Clemson came out Saturday, it looked like the Tigers had already been smacked in the grill.