Clemson coach Dabo Swinney made history with his team's 35-31 win over Alabama in the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship.
Swinney became just the second person to have won an Associated Press national championship as a player and coach. Swinney was a wide receiver on the 1992 Alabama team that won an AP national championship in andw has no coached Clemson to a likely AP title over the Crimson Tide on Monday. (It should be announced on Tuesday.)
As such, he joins former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson, who played on Minnesota's AP title-winning team in the 1930s and later coached the Sooners to three national titles in the 1950s, as the only other player/coach to accomplish such a feat.
Other coaches have won national championships as players and coaches -- Bear Bryant, Jimmy Johnson and Frank Leahy among them -- but in those cases, either the AP Top 25 had not started, or their title was not recognized by the AP.
In other words, Swinney is in an elite college football fraternity.
