Neat story about Jeff Scott, The Undercover Spy

Jan 8, 2017, 11:27 AM

CLEMSON -– Even without Carl Lawson and Montravius Adams, Clemson had a decorated recruiting class to celebrate in February of 2013.
The haul was plenty impressive in the moment, with a No. 14 ranking by Rivals.com, and it has to be considered even more impressive now upon scanning a list that includes Mike Williams, Shaq Lawson, Cordrea Tankersley, Ben Boulware, Jordan Leggett, Jadar Johnson, Wayne Gallman, Mackensie Alexander and Jayron Kearse.
The Tigers’ coaches had every reason to sit back and marvel at a class that followed their first 11-win season in decades, capped with a stirring triumph over LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.
But Jeff Scott didn’t sit back and marvel. He restlessly wondered why the class was not better. He set about diagnosing exactly how and why it did not include Lawson and Adams, two sure-fire stud defensive linemen who strongly considered Clemson but went to The Plains at the last instant.
Lawson and Adams told Clemson’s coaching staff that Auburn’s superior housing for its athletes was a major factor in their choices. Auburn had bigger beds and allowed for two people in an on-campus apartment instead of the four that was the norm at Clemson. Auburn’s apartments had nicer furnishings, more bells and whistles.
So when the offensive coaches took a visit to Auburn not long thereafter for an X-and-O session with Gus Malzahn’s staff, Scott slipped out during a lunch break and went into stealth mode.
“Their new apartments for their players were right across from the football office,” Scott recalled Wednesday. “I snuck into one of them and asked a player if I could take some pictures of his room. He didn’t know who I was, but I’m in there taking pictures of his room.”
Scott, then the Tigers’ recruiting coordinator, returned to Clemson and immediately showed the pictures to Dabo Swinney. Then they showed them to Graham Neff, the chief financial officer for the athletics department. Neff then shared the images with Athletics Director Dan Radakovich.
Renovating the housing for football players can be tricky because of NCAA rules prohibiting athletics dorms. But Clemson’s administration quickly maneuvered through all the red tape, working in concert with the university’s department of housing to make upgrades to Lightsey Bridge Apartments that benefit not just football players, and not just athletes in general, but also regular students.
Two years later, the university is two phases and $2 million into a significant Lightsey Bridge renovation. And the Tigers’ coaching staff now has posh living quarters to show off to recruits when they visit.
“Now we’ve got better housing than just about everybody we’re competing against,” Scott said. “And that’s a great example, to me, of the commitment of our administration to be able to react quickly. At some places, they would say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s nice. I’m sure we can get that project done in five years.’ But Coach Swinney wanted to get it done. He met with them. And then within three weeks they had a plan in place.
“It was something that we needed that was tangible. And now we’re walking some of these big-time recruits in and they think our housing is some of the best they’ve seen.”
Not long ago, in the summers of 2011 and 2012 when realignment hysteria gripped the college football populace, it was more than fair to wonder if Clemson could keep up as other conferences signed monster TV deals that put the ACC at a significant disadvantage in per-school revenue distribution. It was quite popular at the time to suggest Clemson and Florida State bolt for the Big 12 just to have a chance at competing in the ever-expanding arms race.
As it turns out, the Tigers and Seminoles haven’t just survived; they’ve thrived at a level almost no one envisioned a few years ago. Florida State won the 2013 BCS title, reached the 2014 CFP semifinals and outclassed Michigan last week in the Orange Bowl. Clemson came within a whisker of beating Alabama in last year’s national title game and finds itself right back in the same position preparing for Monday’s CFP final against the Crimson Tide in Tampa.
The most impressive part of Clemson’s 59-9 run over the past five seasons? The Tigers have made a habit of dusting teams they supposedly couldn’t compete with because of the aforementioned financial disadvantages.
Take a look at the Top 20 revenue producers in the most recent USA Today financial database, and you’ll see quite a few of Clemson’s skins on the wall. South Carolina, ranked 17th at $113 million, has become the Tigers’ little brother once again and was fortunate to merely make a bowl game this season. Clemson beat No. 15 Georgia ($116 million) three years ago, and no one questions the Tigers’ superiority over the struggling Bulldogs at the moment. After losing three straight to Florida State (13th at $120.8 million), Clemson has taken control of that rivalry by winning back-to-back games. After losing to Auburn in 2010, the Tigers have won three straight over the nation’s No. 11 revenue producer ($124 million). LSU ranks No. 7 at $138 million.
Then there’s Oklahoma and Ohio State. The Sooners rank eighth in the most recent revenue figures ($134 million), but there are two tombstones beside Clemson’s indoor practice facility that suggest the money disparity didn’t mean much in the Tigers’ 40-6 and 37-17 romps in 2014 and 2015.
The Buckeyes’ athletics department brings in $167.2 million a year, according to the most recent figures. That’s more than double Clemson’s $83.5 million (ranked 39th nationally), but it didn’t stop the Tigers from completely dismantling Urban Meyer’s team last week in the Fiesta Bowl. Nor did it stop Clemson from outclassing the Buckeyes three years ago in a 40-35 Orange Bowl victory.
And now Clemson takes on another financial juggernaut in Alabama, which made $148.9 million according to the most recent figures. Given how far the Tigers pushed the Tide last year in Glendale, no one in his right mind doubts Clemson can stay on the same field with the Nick Saban monster.
It is important to note that the most recent figures in the USA Today database are from 2014-15 reports the schools submitted to the NCAA. A lot can change in two years, and a lot has changed at Clemson: Neff anticipated Clemson’s revenues will surpass $100 million this fiscal year, a remarkable increase from the $66 million the athletics department brought in during the 2012-13 timeframe.
Another key caveat: Clemson has just 19 sports to, for example, 36 for Ohio State. So while the Buckeyes bring in double the revenue, their expenses are also spread over a wider area. That explains why Clemson’s total expenses attributed to football ($27.3 million) aren’t very far behind Ohio State’s ($29.1 million), though they are well behind Alabama’s (48.3 million). Also according to the most recent numbers, Clemson spent $100,000 more than Alabama in 2014-15 on both football support staff and assistant coach salaries.
That said, Clemson’s ability to overcome significant financial disparities has to be regarded as a central element in the Tigers’ remarkable rise to powerhouse status. It’s reasonable to say no one has mastered the dollars-and-sense game better, because Clemson has become a new-age trendsetter that the rich and famous are trying to emulate.
“When Coach Swinney took over,” Scott said, “he had an attitude and a belief that we can improve and we can get better and we need to. He had that constant passion to always be the best and get the best for our players and for the university.”
They say there’s something in these hills, but for quite a while that something did not include a full commitment to football. Part of it was excessive attachment to the past, a belief that if the facilities and fundraising were cutting-edge in the 1980s then they were still sufficient in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Part of it, after the NCAA scrutiny during the glory days and a messy parting with Danny Ford in 1990, was a philosophical reluctance to appear too consumed with winning football games.
Whatever it was, Scott felt the constraints when he was a player during the early years under Tommy Bowden. He even had his finger on the pulse after he left and became a high school coach, because with his father Brad serving as an assistant he’d regularly return for games and practices.
“I felt like we were definitely behind,” said Scott, who returned as a graduate assistant in 2008. “There was kind of an attitude by a lot of people that we’d had great success and tradition in the past, and we’re just fine right where we are.
"And in reality, we were probably somewhere in that 25-35 range in terms of facilities and financial commitment and striving to get better.”
Things began to change when Swinney won the job in December of 2008. Where Bowden tended to be more stand-offish and put his guard up in the push for improved facilities and commitment to football, Swinney successfully built bridges with the administration and sold them on his “All In” vision for transforming the football program from an underachiever into an overachiever.
Football took on greater importance with Board of Trustees chairman David Wilkins, who began his term in the summer of 2009 and reasoned that such a high-profile sport should receive maximum emphasis for the greater good as the “front porch” introduction to the university.
Dan Radakovich was hired in large part to modernize Clemson’s facilities, fundraising and communications. On all three counts, he has been successful.
Jim Clements was hired from West Virginia to replace James Barker as president, and he has maintained an extraordinary presence with athletics in general and football in particular. He is close with the coaches, and he even keeps close tabs on recruits while doing everything he can to sway them to Clemson.
When you’re playing from behind financially, it’s imperative to have everyone in the administrative chain of command pulling in the same direction. There’s zero doubt that is a check mark in Clemson’s favor. Neff and Scott emphasized the importance of IPTAY to this whole process, creating a surplus of funds that can help offset advantages enjoyed by other conferences who are bringing in more TV money. In addition, Radakovich and Neff have worked in recent years to rework contracts for apparel, media and licensing. Add in tweaks to ticket costs and giving levels, and much of the revenue surge is internally driven.
“There’s a gap there with some of these programs that are getting more money through TV and different things,” Scott said. “And if we didn’t have IPTAY and 25 million dollars a year that we could count on, there would be no way to keep up with that gap.
“I give Dan Radakovich and Graham Neff a lot of credit. Because for the last two or three years, pretty much anything we felt we really needed to keep progressing as a program and would make us better as a team, they’ve found a way to get it done. And that doesn’t happen anywhere.”
When Scott was a player, the team’s practice locker rooms were in the bowels of the Jervey Athletics Center. The players had metal lockers, and Scott remembers the celebration when Bowden arranged for a used pool table to be moved to Jervey.
“We thought it was the best thing ever,” he said. “Players were hiding the cue ball in their locker before practice so they could play the first game after practice. And that was basically our players’ lounge.”
In a month, the football program will move from Memorial Stadium to a lavish $155 million operations facility that will be the envy of just about everyone else in college football. The football program’s pioneering social-media model was emulated by Meyer and Ohio State when the Buckeyes decided to devote resources to enhancing their brand. Just this week, new Texas coach Tom Herman said the Longhorns football colossus needs to play some catch-up in the area of support staff improvements.
“We were under-staffed for the elite teams in the country from a support-staff standpoint,” Herman said. “President Fenves and the athletic director have been great in terms of allowing me to create a number of positions, whether it be recruiting, graphics, operations, just to get us where the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Clemsons of the world are, so we can be competitive with those programs.”
Not long ago, it was the other way around with Clemson striving to make up ground with more financially flush schools. And that’s what makes Scott beam with pride as he looks across the college football landscape and sees a wide array of schools with greater resources using those resources on buyouts and other costs that come with regular coaching turnover.
Said Neff: “We’re fortunate that we don’t have significant coaches’ buyouts that we’re paying to staff that we don’t have on the field working. A lot of schools we compete against and recruit against are in that situation.”
Since Clemson made its first major statement under Swinney in 2011 by winning the ACC, 15 of the top 20 revenue producers have made at least one head-coaching change in football. Further, Swinney has shown a remarkable ability to avoid turnover with his assistants; in the last five years he’s had to replace just two coaches, Chad Morris in 2014 and Charlie Harbison in 2013. Clemson has made a strong commitment to paying its coaches top dollar, which goes a long way toward explaining why Brent Venables has been here for five seasons and a number of other desirable coaches have been happy to remain.
Said Scott: “We’re in a place that -- in this time of all times, when there’s a lot of money out there by your competitors that can go spend money and add resources and add facilities – we’re not taking a back seat to anyone. And to be honest, we feel like we’re at the forefront. We have some of those top programs that were ahead of us 10 or 15 years ago that are now trying to catch up to us. We have an alignment of power around here that has allowed us to improve ourselves very quickly. It’s no secret why we are where we are now."
When Carl Lawson and Adams signed with Auburn almost four years ago, Scott and the Tigers’ staff could have just called it a day and celebrated a star-studded 2013 class. Instead, not long thereafter Scott was going undercover to an Auburn player’s apartment to document what the competition had.
When a restless desire to get better coincides with a complete and total commitment from the athletics department and university, you get the beautiful and enviable blossoming of a certified monster at little ‘ole Clemson.
You get the Tigers ripping Ohio State to shreds, and now taking aim at the Saban Death Star.
“Let’s don’t hold back,” Scott said. “We don’t have to look at ourselves in a different light from some of the other top programs.”
Auburn Football - 12 Undefeated Seasons, 13 Conference Championships

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CLEMSON -– Even without Carl Lawson and Montravius Adams, Clemson had a decorated recruiting class to celebrate in February of 2013.

The haul was plenty impressive in the moment, with a No. 14 ranking by Rivals.com, and it has to be considered even more impressive now upon scanning a list that includes Mike Williams, Shaq Lawson, Cordrea Tankersley, Ben Boulware, Jordan Leggett, Jadar Johnson, Wayne Gallman, Mackensie Alexander and Jayron Kearse.

The Tigers’ coaches had every reason to sit back and marvel at a class that followed their first 11-win season in decades, capped with a stirring triumph over LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.
But Jeff Scott didn’t sit back and marvel. He restlessly wondered why the class was not better. He set about diagnosing exactly how and why it did not include Lawson and Adams, two sure-fire stud defensive linemen who strongly considered Clemson but went to The Plains at the last instant.

Lawson and Adams told Clemson’s coaching staff that Auburn’s superior housing for its athletes was a major factor in their choices. Auburn had bigger beds and allowed for two people in an on-campus apartment instead of the four that was the norm at Clemson. Auburn’s apartments had nicer furnishings, more bells and whistles.

So when the offensive coaches took a visit to Auburn not long thereafter for an X-and-O session with Gus Malzahn’s staff, Scott slipped out during a lunch break and went into stealth mode.
“Their new apartments for their players were right across from the football office,” Scott recalled Wednesday. “I snuck into one of them and asked a player if I could take some pictures of his room. He didn’t know who I was, but I’m in there taking pictures of his room.”

Scott, then the Tigers’ recruiting coordinator, returned to Clemson and immediately showed the pictures to Dabo Swinney. Then they showed them to Graham Neff, the chief financial officer for the athletics department. Neff then shared the images with Athletics Director Dan Radakovich.

Renovating the housing for football players can be tricky because of NCAA rules prohibiting athletics dorms. But Clemson’s administration quickly maneuvered through all the red tape, working in concert with the university’s department of housing to make upgrades to Lightsey Bridge Apartments that
benefit not just football players, and not just athletes in general, but also regular students.

Two years later, the university is two phases and $2 million into a significant Lightsey Bridge renovation. And the Tigers’ coaching staff now has posh living quarters to show off to recruits when they visit.

“Now we’ve got better housing than just about everybody we’re competing against,” Scott said. “And that’s a great example, to me, of the commitment of our administration to be able to react quickly. At some places, they would say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s nice. I’m sure we can get that project done in five years.’ But Coach Swinney wanted to get it done. He met with them. And then within three weeks they had a plan in place.

“It was something that we needed that was tangible. And now we’re walking some of these big-time recruits in and they think our housing is some of the best they’ve seen.”

Not long ago, in the summers of 2011 and 2012 when realignment hysteria gripped the college football populace, it was more than fair to wonder if Clemson could keep up as other conferences signed monster TV deals that put the ACC at a significant disadvantage in per-school revenue distribution. It was quite popular at the time to suggest Clemson and Florida State bolt for the Big 12 just to have a chance at competing in the ever-expanding arms race.

As it turns out, the Tigers and Seminoles haven’t just survived; they’ve thrived at a level almost no one envisioned a few years ago. Florida State won the 2013 BCS title, reached the 2014 CFP semifinals and outclassed Michigan last week in the Orange Bowl. Clemson came within a whisker of beating Alabama in last year’s national title game and finds itself right back in the same position preparing for Monday’s CFP final against the Crimson Tide in Tampa.

The most impressive part of Clemson’s 59-9 run over the past five seasons? The Tigers have made a habit of dusting teams they supposedly couldn’t compete with because of the aforementioned financial disadvantages.

Take a look at the Top 20 revenue producers in the most recent USA Today financial database, and you’ll see quite a few of Clemson’s skins on the wall. South Carolina, ranked 17th at $113 million, has become the Tigers’ little brother once again and was fortunate to merely make a bowl game this season. Clemson beat No. 15 Georgia ($116 million) three years ago, and no one questions the Tigers’ superiority over the struggling Bulldogs at the moment.

After losing three straight to Florida State (13th at $120.8 million), Clemson has taken control of that rivalry by winning back-to-back games. After losing to Auburn in 2010, the Tigers have won three straight over the nation’s No. 11 revenue producer ($124 million). LSU ranks No. 7 at $138 million.
Then there’s Oklahoma and Ohio State. The Sooners rank eighth in the most recent revenue figures ($134 million), but there are two tombstones beside Clemson’s indoor practice facility that suggest the money disparity didn’t mean much in the Tigers’ 40-6 and 37-17 romps in 2014 and 2015.

The Buckeyes’ athletics department brings in $167.2 million a year, according to the most recent figures. That’s more than double Clemson’s $83.5 million (ranked 39th nationally), but it didn’t stop the Tigers from completely dismantling Urban Meyer’s team last week in the Fiesta Bowl. Nor did it stop Clemson from outclassing the Buckeyes three years ago in a 40-35 Orange Bowl victory.

And now Clemson takes on another financial juggernaut in Alabama, which made $148.9 million according to the most recent figures. Given how far the Tigers pushed the Tide last year in Glendale, no one in his right mind doubts Clemson can stay on the same field with the Nick Saban monster.

It is important to note that the most recent figures in the USA Today database are from 2014-15 reports the schools submitted to the NCAA. A lot can change in two years, and a lot has changed at Clemson: Neff anticipated Clemson’s revenues will surpass $100 million this fiscal year, a remarkable increase from the $66 million the athletics department brought in during the 2012-13 timeframe.

Another key caveat: Clemson has just 19 sports to, for example, 36 for Ohio State. So while the Buckeyes bring in double the revenue, their expenses are also spread over a wider area. That explains why Clemson’s total expenses attributed to football ($27.3 million) aren’t very far behind Ohio State’s ($29.1 million), though they are well behind Alabama’s (48.3 million). Also according to the most recent numbers, Clemson spent $100,000 more than Alabama in 2014-15 on both football support staff and assistant coach salaries.

That said, Clemson’s ability to overcome significant financial disparities has to be regarded as a central element in the Tigers’ remarkable rise to powerhouse status. It’s reasonable to say no one has mastered the dollars-and-sense game better, because Clemson has become a new-age trendsetter that the rich and famous are trying to emulate.

“When Coach Swinney took over,” Scott said, “he had an attitude and a belief that we can improve and we can get better and we need to. He had that constant passion to always be the best and get the best for our players and for the university.”

They say there’s something in these hills, but for quite a while that something did not include a full commitment to football. Part of it was excessive attachment to the past, a belief that if the facilities and fundraising were cutting-edge in the 1980s then they were still sufficient in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Part of it, after the NCAA scrutiny during the glory days and a messy parting with Danny Ford in 1990, was a philosophical reluctance to appear too consumed with winning football games.

Whatever it was, Scott felt the constraints when he was a player during the early years under Tommy Bowden. He even had his finger on the pulse after he left and became a high school coach, because with his father Brad serving as an assistant he’d regularly return for games and practices.

“I felt like we were definitely behind,” said Scott, who returned as a graduate assistant in 2008. “There was kind of an attitude by a lot of people that we’d had great success and tradition in the past, and we’re just fine right where we are. "And in reality, we were probably somewhere in that 25-35 range in terms of facilities and financial commitment and striving to get better.”

Things began to change when Swinney won the job in December of 2008. Where Bowden tended to be more stand-offish and put his guard up in the push for improved facilities and commitment to football, Swinney successfully built bridges with the administration and sold them on his “All In” vision for transforming the football program from an underachiever into an overachiever.

Football took on greater importance with Board of Trustees chairman David Wilkins, who began his term in the summer of 2009 and reasoned that such a high-profile sport should receive maximum emphasis for the greater good as the “front porch” introduction to the university.

Dan Radakovich was hired in large part to modernize Clemson’s facilities, fundraising and communications. On all three counts, he has been successful.

Jim Clements was hired from West Virginia to replace James Barker as president, and he has maintained an extraordinary presence with athletics in general and football in particular. He is close with the coaches, and he even keeps close tabs on recruits while doing everything he can to sway them to Clemson.

When you’re playing from behind financially, it’s imperative to have everyone in the administrative chain of command pulling in the same direction. There’s zero doubt that is a check mark in Clemson’s favor. Neff and Scott emphasized the importance of IPTAY to this whole process, creating a surplus of funds that can help offset advantages enjoyed by other conferences who are bringing in more TV money.

In addition, Radakovich and Neff have worked in recent years to rework contracts for apparel, media and licensing. Add in tweaks to ticket costs and giving levels, and much of the revenue surge is internally driven.

“There’s a gap there with some of these programs that are getting more money through TV and different things,” Scott said. “And if we didn’t have IPTAY and 25 million dollars a year that we could count on, there would be no way to keep up with that gap.

“I give Dan Radakovich and Graham Neff a lot of credit. Because for the last two or three years, pretty much anything we felt we really needed to keep progressing as a program and would make us better as a team, they’ve found a way to get it done. And that doesn’t happen anywhere.”
When Scott was a player, the team’s practice locker rooms were in the bowels of the Jervey Athletics Center. The players had metal lockers, and Scott remembers the celebration when Bowden arranged for a used pool table to be moved to Jervey.

“We thought it was the best thing ever,” he said. “Players were hiding the cue ball in their locker before practice so they could play the first game after practice. And that was basically our players’ lounge.”

In a month, the football program will move from Memorial Stadium to a lavish $155 million operations facility that will be the envy of just about everyone else in college football. The football program’s pioneering social-media model was emulated by Meyer and Ohio State when the Buckeyes decided to devote resources to enhancing their brand. Just this week, new Texas coach Tom Herman said the Longhorns football colossus needs to play some catch-up in the area of support staff improvements.

“We were under-staffed for the elite teams in the country from a support-staff standpoint,” Herman said. “President Fenves and the athletic director have been great in terms of allowing me to create a number of positions, whether it be recruiting, graphics, operations, just to get us where the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Clemsons of the world are, so we can be competitive with those programs.”

Not long ago, it was the other way around with Clemson striving to make up ground with more
financially flush schools. And that’s what makes Scott beam with pride as he looks across the college football landscape and sees a wide array of schools with greater resources using those resources on buyouts and other costs that come with regular coaching turnover.

Said Neff: “We’re fortunate that we don’t have significant coaches’ buyouts that we’re paying to staff that we don’t have on the field working. A lot of schools we compete against and recruit against are in that situation.”

Since Clemson made its first major statement under Swinney in 2011 by winning the ACC, 15 of the top 20 revenue producers have made at least one head-coaching change in football. Further, Swinney has shown a remarkable ability to avoid turnover with his assistants; in the last five years he’s had to replace just two coaches, Chad Morris in 2014 and Charlie Harbison in 2013.

Clemson has made a strong commitment to paying its coaches top dollar, which goes a long way toward explaining why Brent Venables has been here for five seasons and a number of other desirable coaches have been happy to remain.

Said Scott: “We’re in a place that -- in this time of all times, when there’s a lot of money out there by your competitors that can go spend money and add resources and add facilities – we’re not taking a back seat to anyone. And to be honest, we feel like we’re at the forefront. We have some of those top programs that were ahead of us 10 or 15 years ago that are now trying to catch up to us. We have an alignment of power around here that has allowed us to improve ourselves very quickly. It’s no secret why we are where we are now."

When Carl Lawson and Adams signed with Auburn almost four years ago, Scott and the Tigers’ staff could have just called it a day and celebrated a star-studded 2013 class. Instead, not long thereafter Scott was going undercover to an Auburn player’s apartment to document what the competition had.

When a restless desire to get better coincides with a complete and total commitment from the athletics department and university, you get the beautiful and enviable blossoming of a certified monster at little ‘ole Clemson.

You get the Tigers ripping Ohio State to shreds, and now taking aim at the Saban Death Star.
“Let’s don’t hold back,” Scott said. “We don’t have to look at ourselves in a different light from some of the other top programs.”
Auburn Football - 12 Undefeated Seasons, 13 Conference Championships

yorwalecum, Sir

Neat story about Jeff Scott, The Undercover Spy

Re: Neat story about Jeff Scott, The Undercover Spy

I'll lend you a hand:

Thnks he badly needed th breaks

TigerBoard POTD