# Dabo's Decline and the History of CFB's Guy After the Guy

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/split-zone-duo-college-football-podcast-1366379/dabo-s-decline-and-the-history-of-cfb-s-guy-after-the-guy
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/split-zone-duo-college-football-podcast-1366379/dabo-s-decline-and-the-history-of-cfb-s-guy-after-the-guy.md
Podcast: [Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/split-zone-duo-college-football-podcast-1366379)
Published: 2026-04-07T11:00:25+00:00
Episode link: https://www.splitzoneduo.com/p/dabo-swinney-fire-coaches
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/192472347/d9eb5df9bca1114309fb53e38bb6eba4.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/split-zone-duo-college-football-podcast-1366379/episodes/dabo-s-decline-and-the-history-of-cfb-s-guy-after-the-guy
Duration seconds: 1512

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a discussion about college football history. For understandable reasons, people all cautious about calling for teams to make coaching changes when the incumbent is a legend in the job. How careful should we be, though? In this episode, we go through the past 40-ish years of coaching transitions from living legend to … someone else. How do schools do when they either fire an all-timer or need to replace him in retirement? The answer isn’t great , but it’s not as bad as you might think. * 2:04: Why Dabo Swinney got us thinking about this subject * 16:20: The rare cases of the “guy after the guy” arguably doing a better job than the coach he replaced, or at least winning more games for a while * 21:15: The maintainers who kept the train on the tracks, like Ryan Day * 39:13: The long, slow declines, like Virginia Tech post-Frank Beamer * 59:52: The tank jobs, like Ron Zook or Ron Prince * 1:24:16: The cases where the jury is still out, like Kalen DeBoer. (Is that jury still out? We have a mini-debate.) * 1:31:15: Lessons for Clemson heading into another fraught season This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can hear a nice big free preview To get this episode and many, many more (as well as a whole back catalog of evergreen college football history shows, reporting on the coach carousel, and more), become a paid subscriber today. Producer: Anthony Vito

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