The Relationship Between UNC’s Bill Belichick and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney

Bill Belichick will be facing a plethora of experienced college coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, from Pittsburgh's Pat Narduzzi, Virginia Tech's Brent Pry, NC State's Dave Doeren, and Duke's Manny Diaz. Then, there is Boston College's Bill O'Brien and Stanford's Frank Reich, who both have NFL experience as well.

Then, there's Clemson's Dabo Swinney, arguably Coach Belichick's toughest chess match when looking at the schedule on paper.

What does the 73-year-old think of Swinney? Clemson's program? Here's the transcript provided by TheACC:

"Yeah, we're all learning from Dabo. That's very nice of him to say that, very complimentary. Dabo has been a friend for a long time. We've scouted his players from the NFL down. Some of the players that are here today, I actually thought, maybe we'll be drafting one of these guys, and now here we are going to be playing against them.

But Dabo has been great. I have so much respect for him and the Clemson program, what he's done, the way he runs it. It's high quality. Kids are high quality. He came up to New England, got probably the top player out of New England in the last probably decade, Christian Wilkins out of Springfield, Suffield Academy.

I think that says a lot for the program that he runs and what he's done for not only college football but all the student-athletes that he's coached there. They've gone on to represent him and the school very well.

Again, I have a ton of respect for Dabo and what he's done. Great opportunity to spend some time with him at the ACC coaches' meetings, and he's always been a really enjoyable guy to be around. I don't know if that'll be true on Saturday afternoon. Probably not. But at least in these meetings it is."

The respect is there for Coach Belichick and vice versa, given he's been involved with the game of football for a good chunk of his life.

Now, obviously Coach Belichick does not have to worry about playing the game of football himself (that's the job of Gio Lopez, Will Hardy, Thaddeus Dixon, and Jordan Shipp), but he does have the task of facing a talented head coach in Swinney — obtaining multiple ACC Championships during his career.

Saturday, October 4, is the day UNC and Clemson go head-to-head on the gridiron, and these two head coaches will battle it out in one of the more highly anticipated matchups the conference has to offer.

That's one month and three days after the season opener.

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