Why Dabo Swinney is this generation's Bobby Bowden

— -- The coaching legacy of Bobby Bowden is an enduring one. The Hall of Fame coach won 357 games and two national championships in 40 seasons at West Virginia and Florida State. Three of his four sons are college coaching lifers: Terry is the head coach at Akron, where his brother Jeff is an assistant. Tommy won 90 games in 11-plus seasons at Tulane and Clemson.

Yet if anyone has carried the legacy of Bobby Bowden into the modern game, it is the coach who has led Clemson into the College Football Playoff for the second consecutive year. Dabo Swinney is a flowering branch of the Bowden coaching tree. There are plenty of similarities between the coaches, right up to their reaction when called about the comparison.

"I take that as a compliment," Swinney, 47, said one day after practice last week.

"That's a compliment," Bowden, 87, said from his home in Tallahassee last Friday.