As a college football fan, I really like Dabo Swinney. He’s fiery and passionate and successful. The players clearly love him. He gets them ready for the NFL and seems to get them ready for life. I would have sent our sons to play for him if they hadn’t been cursed with my genetics. He just seems great for the sport. And like me, he’s wrong a lot but so confident in his views that it takes a lot of evidence for him to change.
He has very publicly argued against the transfer portal. It clearly hurt Clemson the last few years, but sentiment seemed to be shifting back toward Dabo this offseason. One of my good buddies in town, Nate, is a rabid Clemson fan and told me heading into the season that Dabo had outsmarted the rest of the teams. The market is moving back to him! Heck, even the WSJ ran an article in mid-August about it. The fist pump means his way is working!
Now at 1-3, and this close to being 0-4, I wonder if Nate feels the same? Does the WSJ? Most importantly, does Dabo?
I know one person that doesn’t: Nick Saban. The greatest football coach of all time said yesterday, "Dabo needs to look at what he needs to do in his program to be continually successful ... the game has changed -- you need to change with it".
When Nick Saban is the voice for change, you have fallen behind the curve.
First movers like TCU ended up in the championship game one year after going 5-7. SMU, who made paying players cool before it was a thing, vaulted into the playoffs last year (where I saw them lose in person to PSU..shameless plug for the Nittany Lions…). Lane Kiffin refers to himself as the Portal King (and almost as flashy as the Tiger King).
I see a lot of similarities between college football and AI. Between Dabo and so many of us. If you think I’m reaching…maybe I am. But it’s a Sunday and I don’t charge for this, so you get what you pay for…
The transfer portal was initiated in 2018, but it didn’t really take off immediately because players still had to sit out a year. That was a big disincentive.
It wasn’t until post-covid in April 2021, when the NCAA allowed a one time transfer without sitting out, that players started really transferring. And more importantly, coaches started pursuing it.
Look at the pace of change in college football recently.
2018 - Portal initiated
2021 - Covid rule allows players to transfer without sitting out a year
2022 - NIL kicks in
A new thing was invented. A rule change started a fire…and then NIL threw gas on that fire. Next thing you know, slow adopters like Dabo are getting smoked by lesser coaches.
Can you guess where this is headed?
Most of us are every bit as competitive as Dabo Swinney…and just as stubborn. I don’t think a rule change is coming that will cause the real estate industry to suddenly start moving as fast as college football did, but something will. I suspect it will be something as simple as practical applications for AI in our businesses that just start compounding.
Next thing you know, AI is so commonplace in our organizations that we don’t even really think of it as AI…it’s just…everywhere.
On one end of the spectrum, a first mover like TCU coach Sonny Dykes went all in on the portal and it worked briefly. But without the decades of investment that perennial powerhouses had poured into their programs, TCU’s advantage quickly slipped away.
On the other end of the spectrum, Dabo is fighting it tooth and nail. An established powerhouse is losing ground.
I think some firms will use it aggressively and experience a burst of winning, like TCU. There will be some real estate equivalents of Sonny signing a new contract after that run. But those wins will fade as the more established companies start adopting.
Where do I want to fall on the spectrum? Where do you?
Will your boss be as patient as Dabo’s? Will your competitors?
We are all so competitive, every single one of us will use AI at some point even if the decision maker today is still a stubborn Dabo.
The WSJ will be running an article in a year about how Dabo finally came around and is coaching Clemson to a deep playoff run.
Or that his replacement is.
