EA Sports Misses Big With Dabo Swinney Look in College Football 26

The model, which appeared in a screen capture during the EA Sports YouTube reveal, drew near-instant criticism across social media. Fans pointed out that while coaches like Kirby Smart, Marcus Freeman, and James Franklin bear a strong resemblance to their real-life counterparts, Swinney’s digital double looks like a random character generated from scratch.

“This isn’t Dabo. This is Dale from Clemson, who eats at the Esso every Sunday after church and thinks NIL is witchcraft,” one user joked on X.

Another fan added, “EA really looked at Dabo Swinney and said, ‘Let’s make him look like a divorced stepdad who sells pest control door-to-door.’”

Others compared the in-game Swinney to a mash-up of Jeff Daniels, Liam Neeson, Bob Odenkirk, and even former president George W. Bush — anything but the Clemson coach fans know so well.

To be fair, the inclusion of actual head coaches — including assistants like Garrett Riley and Tom Allen for Clemson — is a welcome and long-awaited improvement. It adds authenticity and immersion to a franchise that had been dormant since 2013 due to NIL-related legal battles.

Still, many wondered how EA could get Swinney so wrong after reportedly receiving thousands of reference photos from Clemson. “If this is the worst part of the game, we’ll survive,” one fan admitted. “But seriously, they had one job.”

This isn’t the first time EA Sports has missed the mark with a Clemson figure. In last year’s College Football 25 trailer, a quick shot of the Tigers running down The Hill showed an unrecognizable version of offensive lineman Walker Parks.

Parks, listed at 6’5”, 310 pounds, looked closer to 375 in the game — fans joked he was “one biscuit away” from needing his own zip code. The clip went viral and sparked a wave of laughs and eye-rolls across social media.

Now, with Dabo’s look causing a new stir, it seems Clemson still can’t catch a break from EA’s character modeling team.

EA Sports has yet to respond to the criticism, but based on the flood of memes and commentary, the developers may want to consider a last-minute patch — or at the very least, a more accurate rendering in next year’s release.

Until then, fans will have to settle for watching “Not-Dabo” roam the sidelines, looking more ready to lecture on the dangers of TikTok at a Rotary Club than lead Clemson into Death Valley.