CLEMSON — Dabo Swinney’s 1-3 start to this season hasn’t made for a very comfortable ride , but a matchup against North Carolina and Bill Belichick provided Clemson’s coach an opportunity to cruise down memory lane.

His starting point: Swinney versus Belichick is the first matchup of a coach with multiple national titles and a coach with multiple Super Bowl rings since Penn State’s Joe Paterno and Stanford’s Bill Walsh clashed in the 1993 Blockbuster Bowl .

“Wow,” Swinney blurted out this week on his radio show, “and I met both of them.”

In the 1990s, a young Swinney bumped into Walsh, the wizard of the 49ers’ West Coast offense, at an Alabama football clinic. Not long after, in 1996, the Crimson Tide’s staff took a trip to Happy Valley.

As much as Swinney can recall learning I-for

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