When you get stuck in the bed for two days with the flu, you watch a lot of television. And if you are a sportswriter who loves football, especially the NFL, then you watch a lot of television that involves football.
I’m not sure what show I was watching yesterday when I heard this comment, but when I heard it, I immediately thought of the Clemson football program.
“There used to be a time when winning built a culture in football. Now it is the culture that builds the winning.”
It’s a statement Dabo Swinney talks about all the time, but I always thought about it from the first point of view as opposed to the second. You might ask me, “What’s the difference?”
Well, there’s a big difference.
Back in the 1980s Danny Ford’s Clemson teams won a lot. In his 11 years as a head coach, the Tigers went 96-29-4. They won a national championship, five ACC Championships, six bowl games and participated in eight overall.
Clemson was a culture built on winning. From 1987-’90, the program recorded four straight 10 win seasons. Only four teams in the 1980s had a higher win percentage than the Clemson football program.
But in those days, as glorious as they were for Clemson fans, the whole structure of the program was built on winning football games and winning alone and nothing more.
Everything at Clemson in those days centered on this mentality, from the facilities, to the administration, recruiting, to the practices and even to the classroom … it was all a part of building a winning culture. And it was not just at Clemson, a lot of football programs were built that way back in those days.
In 2008, Swinney took over the Clemson football program understanding what had happened here in the past, while understanding it can happen again, but it had to happen in a different way.
The times had changed in college football. No longer was it about the old guard. Players don’t go to a school anymore because of its rich football traditions. As we all have learned there are countless reasons why a student-athlete chooses a school these days.
Yes, winning is important, and it helps, but it is not the No. 1 reason in most circumstances on why a young man decides to attend a certain school. Swinney understood this when he interviewed for the Clemson job back in 2008. He knew had to change the way Clemson looked at its program.
He had to rebuild the culture from the inside, starting with himself, the administration, his football staff, the facilities, recruiting, the support staff, practices and then finally what happens on game days. It’s all a part of the culture.
Swinney built the culture to win, which in turn leads to more sustainable success. Since 2011, Clemson has posted a 68-13 record, which includes six straight 10 win seasons. The Tigers have played in a national championship game, are participating in their second College Football Playoff, have won three ACC Championships and four straight bowl games.
When Clemson players were asked yesterday about Christian McCaffrey’s decision not play in the Sun Bowl for his Stanford team and instead opted to begin his training for the NFL Draft, they said it would not happen at Clemson.
Why? Because that’s not part of the culture, it’s not what they do. That’s why the culture at Clemson just isn’t built to win, it’s built to succeed.
—Credit: Logan Bowles-USA TODAY Sports