On Feb. 15, 2024, Sun sports editor Jane McNally and writer Hamna Waseem sat down with newly minted football head coach Dan Swanstrom. The three spoke for an hour about football, life and everything in between. Part Three details Swanstrom’s goals for the program in his inaugural season and beyond.
Jane McNally: So, you were talking about how this team has a lot more work to put in –– how did you know that you were the right person for this role and to coach this team together?
Dan Swanstrom: I’m glad the Director of Athletics, Nikki Moore, chose me. I’m really thankful for the opportunity. … There’s certainly a level of imposter syndrome. [I’m] you’re sitting here going, ‘okay, do I really have what it takes?’ The history here isn’t great, and it’s been a long time since Cornell football has been good. But the one thing I just kept looking at that I just couldn’t get out of my mind when this job opened was the success of the other sports.
There [are] world class athletes all over this campus. From wrestling, to hockey, to now men’s basketball. … Men’s lacrosse is tremendous. And you look at the soccer programs, and just everywhere I looked, I [thought] everyone’s having some success athletically. There’s something here in the bones that if I could maybe figure out or tap into, can I get football to be good? That was one of the things I really leaned into.
I think the other thing too was my conversations with Nikki Moore. I really had confidence in her vision. I had confidence in the way she articulated her vision for the sport of football and the confidence she had that there was something here that could be successful, and that football, with her support, could be good. That was big for me.
I don’t know why I felt this way. I can’t explain it, nor can I really put it into words. But there’s something that I was very confident that I was the right person to do this. And I had no idea why. It was like an inner peace with the whole thing of like, just please give me the opportunity to do this. I want to do this. I don’t know why I want to do it, but I just wanted to do it. And sometimes you just don’t know. Sometimes you just want to [build] a fire and you want to run into that fire.
I had been in the mix for a lot of different jobs and had a lot of different opportunities, but … I don’t know, that’s just the way I felt. She couldn’t even finish her sentence when she offered me the job. You know, no negotiations, nothing. Like, I’m coming. Getting in the car and let’s go to work. I was ready to run in and start. I don’t know why I felt that way. I can’t even explain it.
Jane McNally: Yeah, you said when you were hired that you have a legitimate vision to have a great football program here at Cornell. What kind of vision do you see this program taking in the next couple of years?
Dan Swanstrom: Oh, we got to crawl first. Then we’ve got to walk before we can run. In my mind, I’m trying to figure out what that looks like. But right now my big thing is let’s get the 87 men who are here for the offseason committed. Let’s get them really understanding what committed Division-1 student athletes look like at a high-end football program, and what that looks like day in and day out. Because I’m not sure we fully understand what that looks like. And I’m still not sure they fully understand because I’m very much in the infancy of teaching.
So right now, I’m just leaning into championship habits when I see them, and when I see them I’m celebrating. We’re working so micro right now. We can’t even fathom a macro situation with a vision at this point, right? Like you can’t have a vision for a finished product when you can’t do the basics of what a football program needs to do. So what we’re doing right now is we’re just celebrating the little victories or celebrating high-end effort. We’re celebrating what we define as committed behaviors from the players and trying to set an example of what that looks like. And there’s so many little things that need to be celebrated and fixed and rectified to get us moving in the right direction.
It starts with buying commitment from those players, asking them for complete blind faith. I mean, they didn’t choose me. They didn’t choose this, they chose a completely different experience here. They chose the experience before. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they chose. And now all of a sudden you got me. And you know, I’m a pretty serious individual. I’m a pretty dedicated individual. And now they’ve walked into this completely different program. And so now we’re just figuring out if that fits what they want to do.
You know, obviously we’ve got to recruit well here to Cornell, we’ve got to bring in the best student athletes we can from around the country and get them to buy [in] and get them to be committed. And let’s see what that looks like. Let’s see what that product on the field looks like. My biggest thing right now, I’ll be very honest with you, you’re asking about this long term vision –– most people have a vision for the first 100 days. And my big thing right now in my first 100 days is I just need to learn as much as I can. You have to figure out what the problems are first before you start trying to solve them all.
Hamna Waseem: So you were talking about recruiting –– what strategies do you plan to implement to attract top tier athletes that you think the team needs to Cornell?
Dan Swanstrom: You know, we recruit [around] the whole country. We’re a name brand institution. I think one of the things that I like so much about this school is not [just] the academic piece but the size of the school [and] having the amenities [that] a major institution [has], but still being at an Ivy League school. [I like] how the school is kind of partitioned into nine different colleges so you kind of get a more tailored academic setting for each individual. I think that’s very unique. You know, most of the schools in our league are colleges, true colleges, [but] I think we’re more of a true university. And I think we need to find 27 high end student athletes [for the fall 2024 season] who are looking for that experience.
You know, a big part is we’re gonna cast a big net across the country because we know people will travel to come to Cornell. And we’re going to work very hard to find the right people that fit [in] here at Cornell, and a big part of that is relationship building and having great communication with a lot of different prospects to make sure that we’re bringing the right 27 student athletes in every year.
It won’t be easy. It’s gonna be a lot of a lot of homework, a lot of extra work. You know, we’re probably gonna have to work a little bit [harder than] Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and Penn with Wharton, but that’s okay. There’s a reason I’ve hired the people that I’ve hired because those guys have that experience. I think they can dig deep. I think they’re willing to do a little bit more to find out a little bit more. I think they’re willing to build relationships. I think they’re very committed [to] the recruitment of players. And so it’s a huge part of what we do, and we’re very much at the beginning part of doing that, but I [expect] this group of coaches to recruit very well.
Jane McNally: You were talking about this before, about how the success of the other sports teams kind of drew you to Cornell, and I feel like we –– as students –– can kind of attest to the fact that there’s just not as much excitement about football as there is on other campuses. Obviously, you’re focused on bettering the team, making this team [a] much better team than it’s been in the past, but does the thought reigniting the student body’s excitement with Cornell football kind of motivate you or energize you?
Dan Swanstrom: It will. I mean, I have so much to do right now. That’s kind of down the list of things, but I’ve been in this town, I’ve been to sporting events and the truth is [that] there are times [where] football has been supported.
I see what happens here –– when you start winning, people love winners. People don’t like losing that much. But the basketball game against Princeton on Saturday afternoon for a 2 p.m. game [felt] electric. We were at the hockey game the week before against Quinnipiac. That was electric and super fun. I’ve been here on afternoons for some of the homecoming games and stuff like that –– [the] place is packed with great energy. It is definitely much more interesting and compelling, especially as somebody who played high school ball in Texas. We have the best band in the league, that’s not even close. That creates amazing energy.
But yeah, of course I want that. You know what I mean? Like, growing up in Texas and [having] that amazing football experience [was] a big part of why I can’t get football out of my blood. But who wouldn’t want that? Even in college, you know? [At Ithaca we] sold 45,000 tickets to MetLife Stadium, certainly sold the Cortland game out at home and stuff like that. It’s awesome to play big games in front of big crowds and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Hamna Waseem: So it’s been a bit since you were named head coach. How has the preparation been for next season?
Dan Swanstrom: I mean, the preparation for the season [is] under construction. It was under construction before I got hired. And it’s going to be under construction every single day. Once again, when you’re building a program back up, your preparation is daily. We’re not even in the position to think about games. We’re just trying to make sure our guys show up to work out some [and are] working hard and we’re moving with purpose and we have intentionality with everything that we do as student-athletes.
Jane McNally: And you were talking about identifying the weaknesses before going in to solve them. And I know you said you were still kind of in the stages of doing that, but what have you kind of learned so far about the group that you have?
Dan Swanstrom: We got to get bigger, we got to be stronger. [We] gotta get more explosive, gotta get faster. You know, there’s some decent athletic pieces in the program. But overall as a program, we’re just behind with our strength. We’re behind with the development in our bodies and you see it with some of the injuries that we’re going through. And we’re a very banged up football team. But a big part of why we’re banged up is because the development of our players isn’t where it needs to be to compete in this league. And so these players got beat up playing the game because they weren’t in the shape that they needed to be to compete at that level. So when they got on the field, you know, some guys got hurt. We got some shoulder [injuries] and things like that because of who we’re competing against.
And I’m not sure they truly understood the ‘why.’ You know what I mean? I think I’m trying to educate them on the ‘why,’ I’m trying to educate them on what [the] bodies [and] the sleep look like. What [does] their strength look like? What does their BMI look like? These are things that are commonplace in the league that they need to be educated on to cut that gap down. The commitment the players at the other seven schools make in the summer to the strength and conditioning [is much greater] compared to what was happening here.
There’s a lot of those little things within the development of the players here that we’re trying to just educate them right [about]. ‘This is what it looks like, this is how you need to train.’ There has to be intentionality with what [we’re] doing. There has to be intentionality with diet and hydration. Sleep is important. If you’re messing around on the weekends and polluting your bodies, that’s going to be a three-day impact and it’s going to affect your training. These are things we weren’t working on when I came back to Penn. These are the things we’re working on –– really figuring out truly what and how Division-1 football players go about their day to day.
Jane McNally: Yeah. Just to finish it off, you’ve talked a lot about the differences the team is undertaking off the field, like the accountability, the leadership. If anything, what on the field in the fall are we going to see that’s different about next year’s [2024] team versus last year’s [2023]?
Dan Swanstrom: I mean, you’ll see a different offensive system for sure. The hope is we’re a little bigger, a little faster, a little stronger, a little more healthy, a little sturdier throughout the year. And I think the thing I’m really going to work on with these guys is two things.
I think just developing competitive endurance and the sustainability of competing for 60 minutes in this league. It’s very challenging. It’s a very challenging, tough league to compete in. The competition’s fierce, it’s tough. Everyone we play is like competition. I mean, look at teams like Arkansas [and] Ole Miss. They’re guaranteed wins. Well, there’s none of that in this league. There’s no money games. There’s no guarantee [of wins]. Everyone’s good. Everyone’s got good players. The coaching is tremendous. We have learned and hopefully [will] develop competitive endurance.
And then the other thing we’re going to work really hard at is developing some steely resolve [and] some poise. The ability to stay on task after making mistakes and, as I would define it, not falling into quicksand and kind of letting one play beat you for the next four to five minutes. And those are the two things I’m really going to be looking for. Can we compete [and have] competitive endurance, and can this group develop steely resolve? You make a mistake, can we bounce back and compete [in] the next play? I think those two things will go a long way in this program. Until our guys develop their strength, until they develop their endurance, their conditioning, until they develop their explosiveness, it’s going to be a challenge. And that’s what we’re working on right now, too. Those are things I want to be working on. I hope it shows up on the field. That’s my hope.