Swinney: Texas Tech a dream opportunity for Morris

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Wed Dec 12 15:30:41 GMT-04:00 2012

CLEMSON – Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney Dabo Swinney
Head Coach
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Offensive Coordinator / QBs
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Swinney spoke to the media after practice Wednesday, and said he does hope the situation resolves itself shortly.

“He had a good interview with the AD from Texas Tech and hopefully it works out,” Swinney said. “It would be a great situation for him, and if not there is a great situation for him here. Hopefully all of that stuff will be resolved here in a couple of days, one way or another. I don’t think they offered him the job, not at this point. We are just doing what we do here and I don’t imagine it will drag on too long.

You want your coaches to have the chance to advance their careers and help themselves.

“That is part of coaching. He is a quality coach and that is why I hired him. He has done a great job here, and if the right job presents itself it will be a great situation. We have a bunch of good coaches on this staff. That is the way it is. Hopefully, he’ll still continue to be with us. But, again, he’s got an opportunity to go coach in the Big 12. If that works out, that’s a dream opportunity. I’m tickled to death that he’s got that opportunity. Who knows? We’ll see how all that plays out.”

Swinney said Morris’ situation and trying to find a new secondary coach wasn’t as much of a distraction as people would think.

“It’s not a distraction at all. We’re trying to get ready,” he said. “We have our meetings. We have a great practice planned, as far as just focusing on the steps you have to take to get the end result that you want, which is to try to win the bowl game. That’s what we all want to do. There are things that you’ve got to do to allow yourself a chance for that to happen.”

He did say, however, that Clemson will keep the up-tempo offense, no matter what happens with Morris.

“It’s a Clemson offense, not a Chad Morris offense. It’s a Clemson offense,” he said. “We hired Chad because it’s what we wanted to do, philosophically, because of the people that you had. The one thing, hopefully, that we’ve demonstrated in four years is we can take players and be creative with them and have success. My first year, in ’09, we had three pretty dynamic guys in [C.J.] Spiller, [Jacoby] Ford and [Michael] Palmer. I think, it’s well-documented we used those guys in a lot of different ways, and set the school scoring record that year. I really knew what I wanted to go to.

“It was just a matter of the right timing and having the personnel. That’s why I went in the direction I did. It was just a matter of who I wanted to hire. The only candidates I was considering at that point were guys that had that philosophy. It was a matter of who I felt like was the best fit for our personnel, me. And we settled on Chad. He’s done a tremendous job. That’s who we are. That’s the personnel that we have and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

He said he wasn’t in a rush to replace former secondary coach Charlie HarbisonCharlie Harbison
Defensive Backs
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“I could hire somebody today. Or I could hire somebody after the bowl game, or somewhere in between,” he said. “Definitely will have that done by the time we get back together as a team after the bowl gam - we’ll have all that resolved by then. No shortage of great candidates. That’s the blessing of being at Clemson, because the environment we’ve created here, a lot of good people want to come work here. That’s a compliment to our program. I appreciate Coach Harbison and the job he did here. He’s like a brother to me, as well. He’s a man that represented this program with class, did everything the right way and put everything he had into Clemson and his players. We deeply appreciate his service. This is a good opportunity for him.”

On the suspension of wide receiver Martavis BryantMartavis Bryant
So. Wide Receiver
#1 6-5, 200
Calhoun Falls, SC
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“You have to follow the rules. At some point, enough is enough. Martavis is a good young man. We have study hall rules that you have to follow here. And when you are just kind of habitual in breaking those rules it gets in my hands and that is kind of where it’s at. He just hasn’t done what he needs to do from a team standpoint and academically. It was a decision that was made and hopefully he will learn from and decide that he wants to be a student.”