awesome, thanks for whole story!***

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Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

Dec 23, 2015, 11:54 AM [ in reply to Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1 ]

It was a good article. Definitely worth the read if you haven't already. Some may already know the story but I still learned a few new things about our AMAZING coach:

HIS POSTGAME SPEECH isn't rehearsed. It isn't really a speech at all. What it is, is a release -- and a relief.

As midnight nears on Oct. 3, Dabo Swinney is standing midfield at Clemson's Memorial Stadium, doing what he always does when a live mic is shoved in his face after a win: He takes advantage of his platform. Clemson has just beaten No. 6 Notre Dame in a 24-22 nerve frayer by stopping a two-point attempt with seven seconds left. The Tigers, off to a 4-0 start, will climb from No. 12 to No. 6 in the AP poll by morning.

Despite the dramatic finish, Swinney speaks calmly at first. "It ain't always perfect ..." But then he feels the orange-clad crowd start to swell around him. Tradition says anyone can stroll onto the field after Clemson games. But these fans aren't just strolling. They're spilling, jumping and soon chanting, "Da-bo! Da-bo!" After too many years of falling short in big games -- what haters call "Clemsoning" -- the celebration is not so much a cheer as a release.

"What I told them tonight," says Swinney, glancing beyond the camera toward The Hill, taking in the students sliding down onto the field, "we give you scholarships, we give you stipends ... [his voice rises a little] meals, a nice place to live ... [louder still] we give you nice uniforms ... [shouting now] I can't give you guts! I can't give you heart!" Wind whips in, tossing the rain under his hat and into his eyes: "TONIGHT IT WAS BYOG ... BRING YOUR OWN GUTS!"

The downpour has filled Death Valley all day and night. It has soaked Howard's Rock (taken from the actual Death Valley in California) and forced some Clemson players to tiptoe, rather than run, down The Hill during their legendary stadium entrance. Throughout South Carolina, the hurricane rains have washed out roads, stranded residents and forced a state of emergency. Gov. Nikki Haley, a Clemson grad whose face is on some of the Tigers' playcall signs, had pleaded for fans to stay home unless they just had to attend. The stadium, of course, was full.

"And thank you to the good Lord and my dad," Swinney says in closing, "who was with me tonight!" To hear him tell it, God has always been by Dabo Swinney's side. Even when his own father was not.

THE REFORMATION OF Clemson football has been preached publicly by Swinney in that rain-soaked BYOG soliloquy and the on-field halftime "You be who we are!" speech caught on air at Miami in late October -- when Swinney's Tigers were up 42-0 -- and when Swinney blew up at a reporter for uttering that word: Clemsoning. It was captured by his endless locker room dancing on YouTube (Dabo hitting the Dab, get it?) and when he dug into his Pelham, Alabama, drawl to describe the Tigers in the College Football Playoff as "the rednecks that moved into the nice neighborhood."

The country-fried act is endearing, sure, but it belies an intelligence and work ethic that's anything but aw-shucks. The 46-year-old Swinney is a shrewd CEO disguised in a short-sleeved windbreaker, corporate-trained and ruthless. When he was named interim coach after Tommy Bowden's midseason ouster in 2008, Swinney already had a plan in place -- and he'd share his stack of three-ring binders with anyone who stopped by his office, from boosters to administrators to newspaper columnists. Even though it wasn't really his office yet.

Amid assumptions that Swinney was simply a lame duck until a real headman was hired, the former wide receivers coach frantically gave everyone the hard sell. He outlined where he'd spend money, if given it, whom he'd hire, if allowed to, what style of offense he wanted to run, if handed the reins. Every page out of those three-ring binders, notes taken during his 10-year stint as a player, grad assistant and wide receivers coach at Alabama (1990-2000), as well as his five and a half years under Bowden, was presented to Clemson brass as part of a business plan.

The opus, Swinney believed, was a road map to finally lead the Tigers out of two decades of staleness. Folks around town still sported 1981 national champions bumper stickers on their trucks. But those stickers had long ago faded from proud orange into a washed-out white.

"We were so behind in so many ways," Swinney says now. "We'd gotten behind in facilities. We'd gotten behind in recruiting. Everything looked old. So I had to start selling. Not just to people on the outside but to people on our own campus."

Selling, it turns out, comes naturally. It's his learned trade, not a position handed down from Daddy. His father, Ervil, owned a washing machine repair shop in Pelham and could fix about anything. But Ervil couldn't fix his own business plan and turned to alcohol as a full-time gig.

Despite the long odds, the youngest of Big Erv's three boys, William Christopher (Dabo is a Southernism for "that boy," as pronounced by one of his brothers), went down to Tuscaloosa and earned a bachelor's in commerce and business administration and then an MBA -- and a starting spot as a walk-on wide receiver for the Tide's 1992 national title team. In between his tenures as an assistant at Bama and Clemson, the only three years of his adult life not in football were spent selling commercial real estate. "Let me tell you something," Swinney says. "If you can convince a couple of women's clothing stores to play nice and share the same address, it's no sweat to walk into the athletic director's office and say, 'Man, we need to double our support staff, I need a checkbook to go hire some coaches and, oh, by the way, we need a practice facility!'"

So those first couple of months in charge, he wore out the door of the man who promoted him, worried that local cries for a national search would doom him. "Dabo immediately asked for this, asked for that," says Terry Don Phillips, who retired as Clemson's AD in 2013. "I'd say, 'Why do we need to have that?' And he'd always say, 'Because Alabama has it.'"

As construction crews went to work on new digs, Swinney went to work on his staff. When the offense didn't move fast enough, he threw $450,000 at Texas high school coaching legend Chad Morris, who took Clemson's offense from 82nd in 2010 to 16th in 2011 and instantly got a raise to $1.3 million. That year the Tigers also won their first outright ACC title in two decades but were thumped 70-33 by West Virginia in the Orange Bowl. Swinney quickly canned defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, replacing him with longtime Oklahoma DC Brent Venables, who was lured to Clemson for $800,000. In 2011, the Tigers ranked 81st in scoring defense. This season Venables (who now makes $1.35 million) coached that unit to 18th -- it gave up nine fewer points per game (20.2).

But Swinney's best work takes place in the living room, where a salesman must shine. In 2007, the year before he became head coach, Clemson's recruiting class was ranked 18th by ESPN RecruitingNation. In 2015, Clemson's class ranked fourth and included 13 players ranked in the ESPN 300. The No. 8 prospect for 2016, defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, has already committed to Swinney over Bama, Ohio State and a host of ACC teams.

"When Steve Spurrier got to South Carolina, he made that place cool," says a longtime in-state high school coach. "Then Spurrier started looking old, Clemson's offense got rolling and look who's cool to these kids now."

No one gets a bigger kick out of "being cool" than Swinney, who quickly refers to his dance moves as "proof that I ain't all that cool." But he can't deny that his reputation has changed among 18-year-old recruits. Just ask Deshaun Watson.

"People see those crazy postgame speeches, and some of them think, 'Man, that can't be real,'" says the sophomore quarterback. "But it is. That's Coach." Watson swats his hand, dismissively, and lets out a guttural laugh. It was three autumns ago when Watson, then the No. 1 prep QB in the country, sidestepped Bama, Auburn, FSU and USC, all of whom have won national titles during his lifetime, to choose Clemson. "I ended up here because of [Coach Swinney]," says Watson, a native of Gainesville, Georgia. "That's the guy who convinced me. He's genuine. He's done everything he promised when we first met."

Swinney promised that Watson would be the face of the program. Check. He promised that Watson would lead a wide-open offense. Check. But what truly sold Watson was Swinney's story. The coach himself calls it his man-with-nothing-to-lose story.

The two men, coach and QB, have exchanged memories of police knocking on the door late at night, tears shed over the unknown, ironclad mothers and the drive to push for something better.

Watson was raised by Deann, a single mother with four kids who worked all day, then put in nearly 300 hours of community service to qualify for a Habitat for Humanity home. The Watsons persevered and left behind public housing, only to find out Deann had tongue cancer. She survived but lost part of her tongue. Similarly, Swinney grew up in a single-parent home after his alcoholic father bolted, forcing his mother, Carol, to bounce through evictions with three boys, one of whom Dabo would one day put through rehab on his coaching money.

"My father figures were my coaches," Swinney says. "For too many of these kids, it's the same thing. So when I tell a mama I'm going to look after her little boy, that I'm going to make sure he can take a step toward that better life, then I'm going to do it. And they know I am."

Watson doesn't have a relationship with his father. Swinney didn't until he became the first in his family to graduate from college, when a repentant, proud Ervil came back into his son's life. He was too late to be a father but still had time to be a grandfather to Dabo's three sons. Ervil lived out his final sober years repairing washers and dryers at an old hardware store near Pelham, surrounded by Clemson memorabilia and fighting lung cancer. He spent game weekends at Clemson with his new wife, sleeping in one of Dabo's guest rooms. Carol and her new husband slept in the other. "We were as broken as broken could be," Dabo says. "If you can fix that, you can fix anything."

Big Erv died in August, just as the Tigers started practice. He'd been gone only two months, nearly to the day, when Dabo stood there in the rain and spoke of his father. As the fans started bouncing and the "Da-bo!" chant built, Swinney wrapped up his interview, nodded to his police escort and gave the marching orders: "Let's find my wife and boys ... and let's find Deshaun. It's time to hug some necks."

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Forever. I would have given up any Christmas gift to see these awesome young men changing everything at Clemson for the better and them playing Like champions every game until we were 13-0 and the number one seed in the playoffs.

The bonus is Clemson has come together, fans, Alumni, administration, Iptay. coaches and built a foundation that is stronger than anyone in college football has ever put together. We will be stronger in all areas each of the next four years and beyond. Dabo said the best is yet to come.

As it is right now our rival is out of the picture in competing with us. Our biggest rival is going to be who we play in the playoff like Alabama, OU and FSU. Of course it will be fun to skin chickens too..lol (can you imagine how foolish they feel for talking trash to us during the holidays)

I have noticed my family that root for the coots and the Dawgs disappear when football come up or act like the never cared about football..lol

Thank you Dabo!! Go Tigers!! Merry Christmas to all of you!

FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

just spitballing here, but maybe click the link below

Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

If you send me a check for $63.17....I will open it for you.***

Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

Nice!***

Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

JESUS! What a story & Merry Christmas to ALL! ??

Re: FB Update: WATCH: ESPN's take on Clemson's rise to #1

All of us are so GRATEFUL that Dabo is a part of Clemson

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