By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
The Chick-fil-A Bowl can probably thank Terry Don Phillips for this year’s matchup between 13th-ranked Clemson and No. 7 LSU—the popular bowl’s first ever meeting between two 10-win teams.
Clemson’s outgoing athletic director played a big role in the careers of the head coaches who will be walking the sidelines when the two teams square off against each other on New Year’s Eve at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
“It is kind of ironic when you think about it,” Phillips said Wednesday.
It’s ironic because Phillips was the one who gave Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and LSU’s Les Miles their first head coaching gigs in a profession where that one shot means everything.
“I love Terry Don,” Swinney said. “He is a man of integrity and vision. He is also a man of guts. He had the guts to hire me.”
Phillips had the vision and the guts to hire both Swinney and Miles. When he first became the athletic director at Oklahoma State in 1995, Phillips liked what he saw in Miles, who was the offensive coordinator on Bob Simmons’ staff at the time.
The athletic director was impressed by the way Miles coached, and by the way he managed his time and his family life.
Phillips, who is still on at Clemson helping out new athletic director Dan Radakovich until his retirement is official at the end of the school year, says he had a very similar impression of Swinney when the young coach came on board Tommy Bowden’s staff in 2003.
“They have very similar traits,” Phillips said. “They are great family men. They have great moral character. They are very passionate. They have tremendous work ethic and came up under great coaches.
“Dabo came up under Coach (Gene) Stallings at Alabama and Les came up under Coach (Bo) Schembechler at Michigan. Nobody gave either one of them anything. They are where they are today because they worked hard at it. They have great characteristics and are great people. There are a lot of similarities between the two. I enjoyed watching both of them coach as assistant coaches because they are tough and are very demanding, but have a great concern and love for their players.”
In his four years in Stillwater, Okla., Miles took an Oklahoma State program that had three straight losing seasons prior to his arrival in 2001 and won 28 games, including 8-5, 9-4 and 7-5 campaigns in his last three seasons there.
In each case, the Cowboys accepted invitations to play in the Houston, Cotton and Alamo Bowls. Miles ultimately left Oklahoma State for LSU, where he has won a National Championship, played for it another time, won two Southeastern Conference titles and three SEC West Division titles.
“He is a really good on the field coach,” Phillips said. “He is really passionate and tough. He is a tough coach.”
Since taking over first as the interim head coach, and now as head coach, Swinney has taken Clemson to heights it has not seen since the Danny Ford years. In 2011, the Tigers won their first ACC Championship in 20 years and advanced to their first BCS Bowl game in 30 years. They followed that up with a 10-2 season this year, which included a share of the ACC’s Atlantic Division title – their third in four years.
Swinney has also guided Clemson to back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time since the 1987-’90 era.
“Sometimes in this business and I’m sure all businesses are like this, you have to trust your instinct,” Phillips said.
As everyone knows, Phillips trusted his when he gave Swinney—a guy many criticized for not being a coordinator—his shot after Bowden resigned as head coach midway through the 2008 football season.
“I knew Dabo was going to be a good head coach someday, and I’ll be darn if I was going to let him go and be special somewhere else,” Phillips said.
As Phillips said, “Clemson is still a young program that is maturing and is on the way up.” He says one day Swinney will have his Tigers playing for conference and national championships every year as Miles’ Tigers do right now.
“We are not where we want to be at Clemson,” Phillips said. “We feel good about the improvement we have made the last few years under Dabo. Les came in with a pretty good hand at LSU, but you still have to coach them and they have to buy into you.
“That’s one of the toughest things you have to do. One thing people on the outside do not appreciate is the fact he was following success and those kids that were there bought into what Les was saying. It takes a special coach to go into a situation that has had success and you are trying to create your program and to get those kids to buy in like Les did, that says a lot about him. That is not an easy choir.”
Swinney obviously came into a different situation at Clemson than Miles did at LSU.
“Even today, Dabo is still establishing his credentials,” Phillips said. “He is well on target to really establish outstanding credentials. Look at the last two seasons and what he has accomplished and what the team has accomplished. You have to be really proud of what he has done.
“I think it is safe to say with both of them, that no one gave them anything. They have earned what they got.”
But it was Terry Don Phillips that gave them the chance to earn it.