Swinney was knocking down jumpers the last time Clemson played Stanford

Swinney says he was at Pelham High School the last time Clemson played Stanford.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Tuesday, September 24 2024

CLEMSON – The last time Clemson played Stanford, head coach Dabo Swinney was shooting jumpers for the Pelham Panthers in Alabama. The second meeting is this week in Death Valley on Homecoming.

Clemson faces the Cardinal Saturday at 7 pm on ESPN. The only meeting between the two programs occurred in December of 1986, a 27-21 Clemson victory in the Gator Bowl. Stanford is now a part of the ACC and made the trip east last week to defeat Syracuse last Friday.

There is more orange in their future this week, and Clemson stands as a 21.5 point favorite.

“We have another opportunity here at home this week. Excited about that. Homecoming is always a big deal here on campus and a lot of fun to see all the festivities that goes into it with our students,” Swinney said during his Tuesday press conference. “And I know there'll be a lot of people coming back to campus night games. So again, we don't get many of these days, so just every opportunity we get in the Valley is special. I mean, it really is and just really appreciate our fans and how they've supported us, these last couple of ball games to sellouts and looking forward to a great environment and great crowd.

“A chance to welcome a good team in here. It's another undefeated team within our league. So that's two weeks in a row. We're playing a team that hadn't lost in the conference. So, another great opportunity for us to continue to build momentum in our season, especially within our league. So good football team. This is a well-coached team. That's the biggest thing I can say in watching them on both sides of the ball. The number one reason I know how well coached they are is because they play hard. They play hard with great effort on both sides, all three phases. And that to me is a reflection of the respect for the coaching that they're getting.

“These kids, I mean they're smart, they're fundamentally sound, but they compete their tails off from the first play to the last play and that's a reflection of their respect for where they are, their coaches, those type of things. And so it's a team that they're going to compete their butts off and so we've got to match the type of energy and effort that they play with for sure, for them offensively. Got a lot of experience up front.”

Swinney praised Stanford quarterback Ashton Daniels, who hails from Buford (GA).

“It's all about the quarterback. This kid, he's local here down in Georgia and a very good player. He is one of the better athletes that we're going to see that plays quarterback throughout the year,” Swinney said. “This kid can run, he can throw and they do a great job schematically with him. I mean it's every type of quarterback run that you can design to go along with three really good backs. They're all really good players. Five (Chris Davis) hit a big one off the quarterback power read against Syracuse. Twenty (Micah Ford) is a load. He's a young player. You can just see his confidence growing, getting better and better. But it's all about this quarterback. This kid makes him go, man. I mean he's got some weapons outside, really, really impressed with all their receivers. Number 13 (Elic Ayomanor) is a superstar. He is a great, great football player and the tight end is a very good player, but just a really good collection of skilled players.

“They know what they're doing and again, schematically, they do a great job of really utilizing the gifts of this quarterback. He can move, he can extend plays. They're going to run him and then they're going to boot him all day to try to create some space and create more time for some explosives down the field. And then also create opportunity for him to scramble if something's not there, he can make a guy miss in space, in a heartbeat. So they're going to create some space for him and change the launch point many, many times. So really impressive when you watch these guys and what they're doing. So it's going to be very important for us obviously to win up front, but to be very disciplined in how we rush. This guy, we got to be very, very disciplined. We got to do a great job on the screen game and then we got to cover him because again, you can't let him sit there and hold the ball.”

Swinney was asked what he was doing the last time the teams played.

“December 1986, so that would've been my junior year of high school. I graduated May of ‘88, shout out class ’88,” Swinney said. “Most of y'all weren't born, but I graduated May of ‘88. So December of ‘86 would've been my junior year. I was playing basketball for the mighty Pelham Panthers. I was knocking down some J’s (jump shots) for the Panthers, for Paul Kellogg and having a ball doing it, and then we roll right into baseball after that. We'd play the big Orange classic at Berry High School. It's now called Hoover High School, but it was called Berry. So we'd play the Big Orange Classic every single year. But those were great times. There's a lot going on in my young life at that time.

“One of my great friends in this business is David Shaw, so I got to reach out to him this week and that would've been pretty cool. Back in the day, we used to talk about that all the time. Hey, maybe we'll meet up somewhere down the road. And our wives would go, no, we don't. Don't want that. But here we are. So that's the newness of this era of college football. There'll be a lot of matchups that everybody loved traditionally that you may not see as often, but there'll be some new matchups like this that you'll say, okay, well that's going to be interesting. So this is a true East Coast, West Coast matchup.”