It’s hard to imagine, but what would the football program be like had Dabo Swinney not been in Clemson when Tommy Bowden stepped away at the midway point of the 2008 season?
It was closer to a reality than you might think.
Following the 2007 season, a year in which the Tigers went 9-4, Swinney, who was Clemson’s wide receivers’ coach at the time, came into Terry Don Phillips office and asked for a favor.
“Of course Dabo wanted to be a head coach,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t that he wanted to leave the program or anything, but he was like every other young coach. He wanted to be a head coach. If he had an opportunity to go somewhere and prove himself, he would have liked to have done that.
Swinney handed Phillips his résumé and asked if he might put in a good word. Phillips did not want to indicate the name of the school Swinney applied for, only identifying it as an FCS school.
“There was a job that was open that he would have been a tremendous fit for,” Phillips said. “Dabo gave me his résumé and everything and I tried my best to talk to them about Dabo, but I could not get to first base with them, which we were very fortunate that occurred.”
Clemson was extremely fortunate. Several months later, Bowden step aside and gave Swinney an opportunity to show what he can do. What he did was become the first and still only interim coach to take over a team at mid-season and guide that team to a bowl game. He is the only interim coach in the history of college football to finish the year with a winning record.
Following a 31-14 victory over arch rival South Carolina, Phillips hired Swinney as the next head coach.
“If I had not had the opportunity to be the interim, I’m probably not standing here,” Swinney said.
On October 13, 2008, Tommy Bowden stepped down as head coach at the midway point of the season. Dabo Swinney took over as the interim head coach. (photo courtesy Clemson Athletic Communications)
How it began
On October 13, 2008, Bowden stepped down as Clemson’s head coach. The Tigers opened the year as the No. 9 team in the country according to the Associated Press, and were the overwhelming favorite by the media to win the ACC.
But 24th-ranked Alabama handed the Tigers a punishing 34-10 defeat in the season-opener in the Georgia Dome, and that sent the season spiraling out of control. By midseason, following back-to-back losses to Maryland and Wake Forest, Bowden stepped down as head coach.
After meeting with Bowden’s assistant coaches, informing them Swinney was going to be the interim head coach, Phillips told Swinney to meet him in his office in five minutes.
“I literally went down there with the mentality this is going to be the most miserable six weeks ever,” Swinney recalled of his thought process at the time. “I thought he was going to tell me, ‘I know we put you in a bad spot, but do the best you can. Maybe I will try to get the next guy to keep you.’ I thought that maybe he might give me some parameters on how he wanted me to run the program over the next six weeks. But it was none of that.”
Instead Phillips gave Swinney complete autonomy. For six weeks he could run the program the way he would run it if it was his own.
“This was an opportunity to see how he would do,” Phillips said.
“I walked out of his office walking on the clouds,” Swinney said. “I was empowered and energized because of his belief in me.”
Swinney thrived, primarily due to the five-minute conversation he had with Phillips. With only three full days of practice, the Tigers nearly knocked off Paul Johnson’s Georgia Tech squad that finished the year 9-4 and ranked No. 22 in the country.
Clemson then proceeded to beat Boston College, Duke, Virginia and South Carolina to close the regular season with four wins in its final five games. A lot of people were surprised by the Tigers strong finish with an interim coach at the helm. Not Phillips.
“He was happy to see me get an opportunity, but we both knew I was going to have to win some games to have a chance,” Swinney said. “We were able to get it going so it kind of made it easy for him. He told me up front, ‘I would love to see you get this job. I think you are ready for this job. I think you would be a great fit. You are just going to have to find some way to win some games. I want you to be the head coach. I don’t want you to be the interim head coach. I want you to act like the head coach, think like the head coach and do whatever you need to do to fix this. Whatever it is, I’m going to support you and let’s go for the next seven weeks. You will get an interview no matter what.’
“The fact that we were able to win some games made it easier, but he took a huge chance. He knew he was going to be tied directly to that decision.”
Phillips did not care. He saw something in Swinney no one else did. For more than five years, he paid attention to the way Swinney coached, how he interacted with his players and how his players were drawn to him.
“He had such a great relationship with those kids, they would run through a brick wall for him,” the former Clemson athletic director said. “When I would walk through McFadden, he would always have kids in his office, and they were not necessarily his position players. The kids migrated to him. That in and of itself is an extremely important barometer with regard with that relationship you have with student athletes.”
Dabo Swinney’s teams were just 19-15 in his first three years at Clemson.
It was not going to be easy
On December 1, 2008, the interim tag was removed from Swinney’s title. He was now the head coach of the Clemson Tigers.
“Terry Don told me when he hired me, ‘You just continue to be who you are. Go with your gut and your instincts and I’m going to support you,’” Swinney said. “‘We are in this for the long haul. I believe in you. I think you are going to be one of the best coaches in the country. But there will be some good times and some bad times, but I just want you to know that I got your back.
“‘I don’t want you to be distracted by things that don’t matter. If it doesn’t work, I will help you pack and you can help me pack and we will go together.’”
That nearly happened in 2010. Injuries and lack of depth derailed the Tigers. The season concluded with four losses in their last six games. But there was a sign of promise. Clemson lost five of its seven games by six points or less and another one was by just nine points.
The only game in which they did not have a chance to win was against the Gamecocks, who throttled the Tigers, 29-7. It marked the first time South Carolina defeated Clemson in back-to-back years since the 1968-’70 era.
“That was a low point. Everybody felt awful,” Phillips said. “But when things are going great, everyone is doing great, but to really get a true evaluation of a person is to see how they handle things when things are not going well.”
Phillips said Swinney was never changed. In spite of everything that was going on outside of the football program’s office that year, what the media and those on social media were saying, his young coach never changed his approach. He stayed strong. He stayed consistent for his coaches and his staff.
As he walked through the hall on the second floor of the WestZone following the loss to South Carolina, a dejected Swinney saw his wife coming down the hall to tell him that Phillips was in his office.
“I was like, ‘Well, it was a nice two-year run,’” Swinney said.
Swinney wasn’t sure what to expect when he walked into his office. The room was dark with the exception of one light, and sitting on the couch in the shadows was Phillips.
“What was in my mind, my mind was totally opposite of what I got,” Swinney said.
Swinney knew Phillips had a lot of pressure on him as well.
“Terry Don looked at me and said, ‘Dabo let me tell you something. I know it’s a tough time and there is going to be some negativity, there is going to be some criticism and there is going to be this and that,’” Swinney recalled. “‘But here is what I want you to know. I’m more confident right now, at this moment that you are the guy for this job and that you will be successful, than I was before I hired you. That’s all I have to say.’”
Phillips objective that night was to make sure Swinney knew he had his total support. He did not want his young head coach to think any of the things people were saying were true.
“I felt stronger about him then than when I hired him,” Phillips said. “That was a tough year. People were all around our necks.
“The way he handled adversity, the way he handled his staff, how he handled the players and how he handled himself publically, tells you more about the kind of person they are when everything is going good. It is easy to do those things when everything is going good.”
Dabo Swinney and members of the 2011 squad lift the ACC Championship Trophy in the air after the Tigers beat Virginia Tech, 38-10. It marked Clemson’s first ACC Championship in football in 20 years.
Clemson is back on top
It started to get easy for Phillips and Swinney in 2011. Thanks to talented players like Tajh Boyd, Dwayne Allen, Nuk Hopkins and a super star freshman by the name of Sammy Watkins, Clemson rose to the top of the ACC-mountain for the first time in 20 years.
They also won 10 games in a season for the first time in 21 years.
Last Saturday, the Tigers clinched their fourth ACC Atlantic Division title in seven years under Swinney, and with a win this Saturday at Syracuse, they can win their 10th game of the season … the fifth straight year that has occurred, just only the 15th time in the history of college football a school has done so.
“I knew he could get the job done,” Phillips said. “I did not want to have any regrets. I knew he was going to be great, and darn it, I did not want him to be great somewhere else.”
Swinney has produced a 70-26 record during his time in Tigertown as head coach, including a 51-11 mark since 2011.
“You talk about guts. He had the guts to put his job on the line for me. Standing up there and saying, ‘Hey this is the guy that needs to lead this program at 38-years old.’ I’m just really thankful and appreciative of Terry Don. He is one in a million,” Swinney said.
Clemson’s football program is now ranked No. 1 in the country, it’s on its way of playing in another ACC Championship Game, it’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the quarterback is the favorite, by some, to win the Heisman Trophy.
This is Clemson football. This is the program Dabo Swinney built. And Dabo Swinney is the guy Terry Don Phillips believed in when no one else did.
“I never doubted Dabo,” Phillips said. “I had the opportunity to observe him and I thought he could be a very good head coach.
“I’m just so proud of Dabo and his coaching staff for the way they have done it and where they have taken this program.”
And it is hard to imagine what Clemson might be like if Swinney had been offered that FCS job back in the winter of 2007.
“I truly believe the Good Lord is looking after Dabo because a lot of these things just sort of fall into place,” Phillips said.