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PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. - If Dabo Swinney's Clemson career ends up being one long Alabama job interview, he has aced the test to this point.

The Tigers' coach is playing for a national championship for the second consecutive year at the Fiesta Bowl in the College Football Playoff semifinal. But even out here in the desert, Clemson's coach knows that any discussion of this third CFP is dominated by Swinney's alma mater.

"If Alabama were 8-4, they'd still be dominating the conversation," admitted Dabo who played and coached for the Crimson Tide.

What he didn't mention: If there is a coach out there who projects as a Nick Saban successor, it's Swinney.

He is young enough (47), successful enough (.757 winning percentage) and accomplished enough to be The Next Guy.

It may happen next year at Alabama. It may be five years. It may never happen. Just be advised in advance what's coming. It was contained in one throwaway quote in the day-before press conference on Friday with Ohio State's Urban Meyer.

"Winning is not our No. 1 goal," Swinney said.

Wait, what? Dabo better watch his mouth. Those kinds of statements aren't going to play well in a real Alabama job interview -- if it ever comes.

It might not play well at Clemson if two consecutive runs at a title turn into questions of when the Tigers are going to win it all.

Swinney qualified his comments with the usual clichés about building character and enjoying the journey being more important. But there is something different here as to whether Dabo retires at Clemson or someday makes the leap to Alabama.

"I just made a decision a long time ago I'm not going to be defined by a scoreboard," he said. "We're going to have fun."

Fun as in dancing with his players in the lockerroom. Fun as in allowing his players to explore themselves on the field as well as off. Look at Deshaun Watson's controlled hair-on-fire playing style that makes him arguably the No. 1 dual-threat quarterback in the country.

Dabo is a giddy outlier. 60 Minutes Sports took notice in October quoting Dabo as saying, "We work too hard to be miserable."

That's easy to say when you're winning back-to-back ACC titles for the first time in 28 years. It's also something any employer of Swinney is going to have to accept.

"I don't want to ever become a team or a program that when we win, it's just a relief," he said.

That's a lot of what modern coaching has become. The depths of losing are much worse than the heights of victory.

It is reflected in some ways in this entire Football Four field. The stern Saban is chasing a fifth title in eight years. Washington's Chris Petersen seemed to be happy spending a career in Boise until the lure of the Power Five convinced him otherwise.

Meyer's issues at the tail-end at Florida have been well documented.

None of them are folks you'd necessarily invite to spice up a cocktail party.

"I went through a period of time I was disengaged," Meyer admitted this week. "I was obsessive about being undefeated. It sounds silly."

Maybe it's the reality that whoever wins this sucker next month in Tampa is going to be confronted with immediate demand to win it again.

"Dabo's going to experience that the more success [he has] that he's built this monster he has to feed," Meyer said.

Let's hope this altogether enjoyable, impish, clone of Steve Spurrier -- at least in personality -- is never altered by that beast. You go, Dabo.

Sure, the playoff has doubled the field of possible champions, but in a way, it has doubled the pressure. Petersen and Washington -- whether they like it or not -- hold the hopes and dreams of often-maligned West Coast football.

Saban is on an unprecedented run, his team being ranked No. 1 at some point for nine consecutive years. His next national title -- if it comes -- will match Bear Bryant for the most all-time (six).

What do they say about never being the guy to follow the guy? Whoever succeeds Saban will be greeted by a nine-foot statue of the man in front of Bryant-Denny Stadium for starters.

Speaking of obsessive, Meyer is 61-5 at Ohio State. But he still thinks about the crushing 2015 loss to Michigan State that kept him a playoff berth.

"Could we have coached better?" he asked rhetorically this week.

That game was 13 months and 13 wins ago.

Swinney has already been to the mountaintop, albeit 24 years ago as a receiver on the Gene Stallings team that won it all at Alabama in 1992.

"It's really all fleeting," he concluded on Friday. "It's the journey to get there. It's that moment in that lockerroom when you're with a group of people that have gotten it done. There's nothing like it. If you could bottle that up and take that out in the world, you'd dominate."

That feeling as a player will never leave him. If it never arrives as coach, you get the feeling that's OK too.

Dabo Swinney will remain one thoroughly enjoyable outlier.