Dabo Swinney is always present during his four football camps, which began this past weekend and will run through June 16.

The Clemson head coach is easy to spot. He maneuvers around on the practice fields behind the indoor facility on his own golf cart, where he goes from position group to position group and sometimes jumps out to lend a hand to some of the 100 or so coaches that assist with camp.

That is what happened this past Saturday when Swinney jumped out of his cart and stopped one of the drills, which were being run by former Clemson All-American Jeff Davis and current Clemson defensive analysis coach Lemanski Hall.

Swinney blew his whistle and stopped everything. He then politely looked at the 11-year old little boy whom they were coaching and asked, “Do you realize who is coaching you right now?”

Of course the little boy, who was already in awe that Swinney was talking to him personally, nodded his head no.

Swinney then asked the whole group and none of them knew, either. Clemson’s head coach then put his hands on Davis’ and Hall’s shoulders and said, “This guy (talking about Davis) was an All-American here at Clemson and played in the NFL. This guy (speaking of Hall) was named to Alabama’s All-Decade team from the 1990s and played in the NFL. You are not going to get better instruction anywhere else than right here.”

Having instructors like Davis and Hall are two of the many reasons why Swinney’s Clemson camps will host a record 4,400 campers in a 12-day period.

Dabo Swinney’s Football Camp is currently hosting 950 high school football players ranging from grades 8-12. They completed their first session on Tuesday night and will begin Day 2 Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. This past weekend, the Swinney Football Camp gave instruction to 1,100 second-seventh graders.

Clemson will host 900 more youth campers this coming weekend and as many as 1,400 senior campers next week.

“I love teaching young kids about football because I love football,” Swinney said. “That is the reason I got into the coaching business, to teach young people about the game I love.”

No coach in the country puts as much into his camps than Dabo Swinney, which is why he has been so outspoken about satellite camps and what is perhaps the real intent behind the sudden popularity in them.

“It is bad for the game,” the Clemson coach said. “It’s third parties. It’s AAU. It lessens the credibility of the high school coach. It is just bad. There are a lot of unintended consequences people don’t think about.”

Though satellite camp supporters try to say they provide players more opportunities to shine in front of college coaches—big and small—nothing can be further from the truth.

Ever since he began running football camps at Clemson, which started when he was Tommy Bowden’s wide receivers coach, Swinney has made sure the camps he ran for Bowden, and now his own, are all about teaching the players about the game.

There are no 40-yard dashes. There are no vertical jumps. There is no bench press or anything like that, which can be seen at a large majority of the football camps that go on across the country, especially at some of the new satellite camps that have been popping up everywhere since Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh brought it to the forefront last summer.

For the record, satellite camps have been going on for nearly two decades as schools such as UTEP and Colorado State, and others that are tucked away somewhere hard to get to and are hundreds and thousands of miles from nowhere, travel to certain areas of the country so they can see and workout future prospects.

“It is something that has always been going on,” said Mike Dooley, who is the director of Swinney’s football camps, as well as his director of high school relations and player personnel. “I know schools out in Texas and Colorado have done it for years.

“I get to go to the National Directors of Football Operations conferences every year and they have been talking about satellite camps for many years, way before the last two years. They have been doing that for a long time, but it has just recently become a phenomenon. It is not anything new.”

And none of them do it like Dabo Swinney does it.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney (left) and former Tigers’ quarterback Willy Korn share a laugh during a break on Tuesday at Dabo Swinney’s High School Football Camp in Clemson.

Clemson has more than 50 college coaches from 40 different universities and colleges representing the FCS, NCAA Division II, Division III and the NAIA. They are all coaching the fundamentals of the game, while also scouting in their own right.

“We have never done a combine here and we never will,” Dooley said. “We are never going to time a forty or lift a weight or anything. We are just going to teach life and teach football.”

What Swinney offers does not go unnoticed, or unappreciated.

“The comments we get from most of the parents is schools don’t do this anymore. A lot of schools just want you in and out. They just want to see you run and then get off their campus,” said Dooley, who has been running the Dabo Swinney Football Camps for the last eight years. “At our camp, we are actually teaching them about football and teaching them life lessons along the way.

“That’s what we are about and that is what Coach Swinney is about. If you have ever heard him talk to his players, it is about life. He does not coach these campers any different. It is all about life and getting better, being good people and doing things the right way. I don’t think you can get that at a satellite camp. It’s more about running through the motions.”

Satellite camps also don’t allow players playing for those teams the opportunities to earn spending money or to become a mentor to a young boy or a young man like Swinney’s camps do. Per an NCAA rule change two years ago, current players can now work and be paid for helping with the camps.

Clemson linebacker Ben Boulware yells out instructions to a group of campers during Tuesday’s First Session of Dabo Swinney’s High School Football Camp. (photo by Kaila Burns-Heffner)

Clemson had 60 current players helping with the youth camp last weekend, and 64 helping with the high school camp this week. Players such as Ben Boulware, Jalen Williams, Trevion Thompson, Christian Wilkins, Mike Williams, Deon Cain, Artavis Scott, Nick Schuessler, Korrin Wiggins, Jay Guillermo, Mitch Hyatt and a few more are giving instruction and assisting with the coaches.

“Coach Swinney’s beliefs about the program are graduating players, and everything we do is about the players. They are the most important,” Dooley said. “If you take football camp off campus, you can’t help them develop leadership. You can’t help them develop as men and as teachers. You take that all away from them with satellite camps.

“They have no ability to work, instruct, develop leadership, to empathize with others and help with little kids … It is all about helping the players.”

And eventually they return the favor by coming back. In all, 45 former players are working Dabo Swinney’s Football Camps. Guys like Ricky Sapp, Da’Quan Bowers, William Devane, Curtis Baham, Xavier Brewer, Kalon Davis, Jim Brown, Mark Drag, Xavier Dye, Willy Korn, Rashard Hall, Bobby Hutchinson, Rashaad Jackson, Tracy Johnson, James Lott, Rod McDowell, Jock McKissic, Otis Moore, Courtney Vincent and Dawson Zimmerman to name some.

“For us, I still believe in the old-school model of teaching football and coaching a camp and that is just the way we do it,” Swinney said. “Our camps have exploded over the last seven or eight years. We have two youth camps, second through seventh graders. We have two high school camps and it’s been great. So we will take two weeks and we are going to coach football at Clemson and continue to do things the way we have done them.”

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