Ashleigh Snyder
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney hopes to best Brian Kelly as Clemson takes on LSU on Aug. 30.
40 years.
Dabo Swinney and Brian Kelly bring nearly half a century of combined experience to the sidelines on Aug. 30 as Clemson takes on LSU in Death Valley (the real one). In those years, both coaches have become faces of their respective programs and icons for college football as a whole.
The 2025 season will be Swinney’s 18th at the helm for Clemson. In that time, Clemson rose to the top of the football world twice while appearing in the national championship four times.
Kelly has 22 years of coaching under his belt and has a tally of 195 total wins, making him one of the winningest coaches of all time. In 12 seasons at Notre Dame, Kelly had one national championship appearance — a loss to Alabama.
The coaching legend searches for his first national championship win in 2025 with LSU.
Swinney, on the other hand, hopes to emerge at the top of the college football world again in 2025 with a team that has the talent to do it. In Swinney’s tenure, Clemson appeared in the College Football Playoff seven times, but it’s been nearly seven years since Swinney was the last team standing in 2018.
Kelly took a controversial exit from Notre Dame in 2021, and despite three bowl game appearances since then, he has yet to bring his new squad to the College Football Playoff. He watched from home last year as new Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman and his former team were one possession away from winning the national championship.
The pair has faced off four times in their careers, all of which Kelly held the reins at Notre Dame, with Swinney holding a 3-1 advantage. In their most recent matchup, Clemson took down the Kelly-led Irish 34-10 in the 2020 ACC Championship, a resounding response to the win Notre Dame had against the squad just a month before in its own stadium.
With Kelly at the helm of a new team, the opening matchup, Tigers against Tigers, of two top teams in the country will draw eyes from the football world as one of the most anticipated games of the season, with each team and coach hoping to come out on top.