On January 9, under the sticky air in Tampa, Florida, the Clemson Tigers defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide to claim their first championship since 1981. Alabama, a mechanized, modern dynasty, was expected, by night’s end, to again bathe in champagne and confetti. That night, Clemson upset the establishment.

Afforded his sport’s grandest soapbox, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney used the platform to not just bask in the glow of victory, but also condemn critics.

“At the end of the day, we left no doubt tonight. We wanted to play Alabama because now y’all got to change your stories. You got to change the narrative. Y’all got to mix it up. The guy that called us a fraud? Ask Alabama if we’re a fraud. Was the name Colin Cowherd? I don’t know him, never met him. Ask Alabama if we’re a fraud. Ask Ohio State if we’re a fraud. Ask Oklahoma if we’re a fraud.

“The only fraud is that guy, because he didn’t do his homework. I hope y’all print that.”

Swinney’s rhetoric fell in lockstep with the current climate of America’s other great sport: politics. Claim victory. Attack the press, both in generalities and with a specific target. Call out adversaries, present, past and distant past – Alabama, Ohio State and Oklahoma are to Clemson what Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Rosie O’Donnell are to Donald Trump.

The election/title game parallels go well beyond Swinney’s victory lap diatribe. No coach in college football leverages the us-against-them mentality better than Swinney, who has created an insulated culture in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Clemson football is the collegiate embodiment of red state populism. From his Churchillian “Bring Your Own Guts” speech to his unapologetic praise and belief in the powers of God, Swinney is not just a successful football coach, he’s the school’s biggest cheerleader.

That Clemson defeated an Alabama plutocracy defined by an ambiguous blueprint, The Process (think: The Clinton Machine) seemed nothing short of providential. To be fully vindicated, Clemson had to upend the establishment and, at least for the time being, signal a new world order in college football – one where No. 1 recruiting classes and bloated support staffs no longer carry an impenetrable aura. A landscape where the players make the program, the program doesn’t make the players.

There has long been a dovetail between politics and sport. Whereas the latter was an escapist technique to avoid the former, the evolution of both modern football and democracy have blurred the lines of distinction, at least from an operational standpoint.

Head football coaches are no less of fundraisers than politicians. On the surface, results are measured by wins, losses and policy creation. Dive deeper and there’s the appeasement of boosters, recruiting of high school players, construction of backroom deals, dangling of career advancement and promising of future riches. Constituents, fans, athletic directors and Congress make for an amalgam that expects results and demands accountability.

The coaching-politician fusion extends to the navigation of scandals, where it’s necessary to maintain the ever-present awareness of potential pratfalls. During Jim Tressel’s fall from grace, Sports Illustrated’s George Dohrman compared Ohio State’s scandal to that of a tumbling political empire.

Tressel has often been described as senatorial, an adjective rarely applied to a football coach; in fact, one of his nicknames is the Senator. He has been lauded for his sincerity and his politeness, and people who admire his faith in God often mention the prayer-request box on the desk in his office at Ohio State.

…

Yet while Tressel’s admirable qualities have been trumpeted, something else essential to his success has gone largely undiscussed: his ignorance. Professing a lack of awareness isn’t usually the way to get ahead, but it has helped Tressel at key moments in his career.

…

For more than a decade, Ohioans have viewed Tressel as a pillar of rectitude, and have disregarded or made excuses for the allegations and scandal that have quietly followed him throughout his career. His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, the Senator was not the person he purported to be.

Written nearly six years ago, the only part of Dohrman’s feature that feels dated is the differentiation between football coaches and an individual perceived as senatorial. We now reside in a landscape where Urban Meyer endorsing John Kasich makes the homepage on both SI and Politico.

Recently, internet rumors have surfaced that former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville intends to run for governor of the state of Alabama. Given that Tuberville, as coach of Cincinnati this past season, was captured on film yelling at his own fans to, “Go to hell” and, “Get a job,” it’s difficult to imagine he has the proper demeanor to oversee one of the nation’s 50 states. Even Tom Osborne, as a sitting member of the House of Representatives and the most popular person in Nebraska this side of Warren Buffet, could not win the state’s gubernatorial race in 2006.

Then again, we’re not even a year removed from the future President of the United States of America boastfully telling constituents he could, “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose voters.

In 2002, both Donald Tump and Dabo Swinney worked in real estate. One is now president, the other a title-winning head coach. No longer do decorum and experience preclude success.

For that reason, maybe Tuberville does stand a chance. He’s had plenty of practice pandering to fan bases, navigating controversy and raising funds. He even owns a parcel of real estate in modern media. Perhaps the lines haven’t just blurred, they’ve finally merged.