TAMPA, Fla. -- Nick Saban didn't have to give Dabo Swinney a stamp of approval for the Alabama fan base.
Swinney had just finished talking about how much he loved Alabama football as a kid, a player and an assistant while at Sunday's coaches news conference. Saban felt compelled to chime in about how Swinney still supports his old Crimson Tide teammates and raises money for a children's charity associated with the university.
"I really appreciate the way [Swinney] has managed his loyalty to his alma mater, but done a great job at Clemson at the same time, and never seems to be in conflict," Saban said.
At some point, that day of conflict may come for Swinney. What happens if Mama calls, as Bear Bryant once put it when he returned to Alabama from Texas A&M? Would Swinney go running back to Alabama or stick with the Clemson program he has built back up?
There is no question to answer now, of course. Maybe there never will be. At the rate the 65-year-old Saban is going, who's to say he doesn't coach longer than Swinney, who is 47?
Still, it's an interesting hypothetical question lurking over the second straight Alabama-Clemson showdown in the College Football Playoff National Championship. You never know when a moment will swing what the future looks like.
Saban built a dynasty and is within one win of matching Bryant's six national titles. Swinney built Clemson into an elite program and would be wise to not be the first coach who replaces Saban. There is nowhere to go but down after Saban.
In the world of coaching, it's better to be two coaches removed (at least) from the legend. You don't want to be Ray Perkins after Bryant at Alabama. You don't want to be Bill Guthridge after Dean Smith. (Roy Williams got it right by waiting for the North Carolina job.) Jimbo Fisher has thrived since replacing Bobby Bowden, but he got a head start as head-coach-in-waiting and Bowden had declined in his later years.
Surely, Swinney grasps the difficulty that would occur by immediately replacing this generation's Bryant. He's smart. He has never chased jobs, having only played or coached at Alabama and Clemson for the past 26 years.
Swinney likes having fun. He's folksy. He might end up being this generation's Bobby Bowden, who never got to coach his dream job at Alabama, by winning with humor.
Don't misunderstand Swinney for not being competitive. He is. But he is a rare coach who's comfortable enough in his own skin that you actually believe when he says, "I'm not ever gonna be defined by a scoreboard. Y'all may try to, but y'all ain't ever gonna define me that way. I'm good. I know what I do. I just want my life to matter and not [say] when I die, 'Oh, he took a bunch of trophies with him.'"
How would that attitude play with Alabama boosters, where scoreboards are watched 365 days a year?
Woody McCorvey once coached Swinney at Alabama. He's been back and forth at Clemson, Alabama and now Clemson again. He's now essentially Swinney's general manager as Clemson's associate athletic director for football administration.
"I think Dabo is the right fit at Clemson, just like Danny Ford was the right fit at Clemson," said McCorvey, who used to work for Ford. "I look at a lot of guys that were in a good situation and all of a sudden they went back home and it didn't work. I think Dabo's very smart and he knows what he's going to do. We've got great support from the administration, great support financially, great support from a facility standpoint. All that we're doing now, he's made that happen, and I think it would be very hard for him to walk away from it."
Bill "Brother" Oliver is one of the great defensive minds in college football history. He played for Bryant and coached at Alabama. He used to sit next to Swinney in the coaching box in Tuscaloosa and also coached at Clemson under Ford.
"If I was in Dabo's shoes, I wouldn't touch Alabama with a 10-foot pole," Oliver said. "The mentality of the fans over there at Clemson and the ones at Alabama are entirely different. It's fun over there at Clemson. It's all the difference in the world."
Swinney coaches his children's teams and likes being out in the Clemson community.
"Dabo is the happiest young man you have ever seen in your life," Oliver said. "I guarantee you, when he gets his kids playing travel ball and loading them up for a game, it ain't gonna happen in Tuscaloosa. I watched my son play basketball at the Y [in Tuscaloosa] on a recruiting weekend. I got a note on my desk: Why was I not back on campus with recruiting?"
Still, saying no to Mama would be incredibly hard for Swinney.
At Sunday's news conference, Swinney revisited his days as an Alabama player and invented a new term because of his love for the Crimson Tide. We now have the word "crawl-on" in our lingo, which Swinney described as one notch below a walk-on because he crawled onto the field to wear crimson and white in 1990.
This is the guy who grew up in the Birmingham area and met his wife there.
This is the guy who as a kid watched the "Bear Bryant Show" every Sunday.
This is the guy who fought kids in school if they talked bad about Alabama.
How much is Alabama in his DNA? Swinney wanted Clemson's practice facilities all next to each other because that's how he experienced college football playing for his mentor, Gene Stallings, at Alabama. Swinney cherished the specialness of a locker room at Bryant-Denny Stadium that only got used seven days a year.
Could he really say no if Mama calls? Swinney is religious. Besides coming home, the Alabama job would provide an even bigger platform for Swinney to impact people.
Swinney's already said no once to Alabama, sort of. When he was an assistant at Clemson, Saban tried to hire him many years ago. That's different than getting the call to sit in the chair where Bryant once sat.
"You don't ever say never," Swinney told me in 2015. "You don't ever know what the circumstances would be at any given time. First of all, Alabama may never, ever call me, and I would never have a problem with that. They've got to do what they've got to do.
"My deal is to be great where I'm at. I had opportunities to leave Alabama. I had opportunities to leave Clemson. But I've just never been that guy about the next job. I'm about the job I've got."
All Swinney's done is put together six straight 10-win seasons and go 27-2 in the past two years. He became the first coach in FBS history to win a bowl game against a national championship coach in five straight years (Urban Meyer twice, Bob Stoops twice, Les Miles). If Clemson beats Alabama, the Tigers will have defeated -- all this season -- the four teams that won the past seven national titles (Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State, Auburn).
So yes, Clemson is elite. Anyone who says differently isn't paying attention.
With one more win, Swinney will move into third all-time for ACC winning percentage. Who's No. 3? Ford, the coach who won Clemson's only national title in 1981. McCorvey, a former Ford assistant, said there's no doubt Swinney is now as popular with Clemson fans as Ford.
"They can feel it, they can touch it," McCorvey said. "All of that is important to Clemson people. It's a different environment. Notre Dame is Notre Dame. Alabama is Alabama. Clemson is Clemson. Not everybody can coach at Clemson."
Swinney can. Interestingly, each of the three winningest coaches in Clemson history are Alabama graduates -- Frank Howard, Ford and Swinney. Howard and Ford never became Alabama's coach.
We'll see if that streak continues with Swinney. He has now been at Clemson as an assistant and head coach longer than he was a player and assistant at Alabama before getting fired with Mike DuBose's staff in 2000.
"I wasn't happy to leave," Swinney said. "I was mad at the time. I was not happy. But God had a pan for me, and He knew what I needed. You know, I needed to go. I had never really been anywhere but the state of Alabama, and to have to pack up my family and move to South Carolina, to Clemson, it was great for my family."
Here we are again with Alabama-Clemson II. Here we are again with Swinney so intertwined with the past, present and perhaps the future of both programs.
The kid who revered Bryant can preserve his national championship record (well, at least for another year). The man who united Clemson after decades in the wilderness can now win a national title that only Ford has accomplished. Would winning or losing Monday make any difference to Swinney either way if he ever got that call from Alabama?
Right now, it's just a hypothetical question. One day, it might not be.
