When Terry Don Phillips thinks of the success Clemson has had under Dabo Swinney, he does not take any credit for it. To Phillips, all he did was his job and hire who he thought was the best candidate to lead Clemson’s football program.
Eighty nine wins, three ACC Championships and a national championship later, it is easy to see the former Clemson athletic director knew he had a good thing when he saw it.
The reason Phillips knew Swinney would be a successful head coach has every reason to do with who he is as a person as much as it does who he is as a football coach.
“I am just very proud of him as a man, a husband and as a mentor of young people,” Phillips said to The Clemson Insider recently. “If he wasn’t a great coach, he would still be a great man, a great mentor, a great husband and a great father. He has that character and that perseverance.”
Swinney’s perseverance has allowed him to build a program at Clemson that is now considered among the elite in college football.
Last year, Clemson defeated the top two teams according to the national polls in consecutive games. The Tigers first shut out Ohio State 31-0 in the Fiesta Bowl, the first shutout suffered by head coach Urban Meyer in his career, and the first for Ohio State since 1993.
Then, for the first time in school history, they took down the top-ranked team in the country in a second epic battle with Alabama in the national championship game. Deshaun Watson’s touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow with one second left gave Clemson a 35-31 victory in Tampa, Fla.
In eight short years, Swinney went from an unknown assistant coach to one of the top head coaches in the country.
How did he do it?
He worked for it
“I am really happy for him and Kathleen because life hasn’t always been easy for them,” Phillips said. “They are a special couple, a special family. Everything that they have, they have earned. No one has given them anything,” Phillips said. “They are unique.”
Phillips describes Swinney’s wife, Kathleen, just like Dabo. “You will never see her without a smile on her face. She is so supportive of Dabo,” Philips said. “She is just a unique lady, and like Dabo as a father, she is like a mother to those players. She genuinely cares for them. She nurtures them.”
Phillips says the Swinneys are the epitome of a perfect marriage, and running the Clemson football program is “a family affair.” Without Dabo there is no Kathleen and without Kathleen there is no Dabo.
The Swinneys have been there for each other ever since seven-year old Dabo met seven-year old Kathleen back in grade school over 40 years ago. Since then, they went from boyfriend-girlfriend to prom dates to high school sweethearts to husband and wife and now as the First Family of Clemson Football.
“They can make a movie about them,” Phillips said with a big smile on his face. “They can make a movie out of it because you can go back to how they were young people and what they went through with college and how he walked on at Alabama … walking on, getting a scholarship and being able to contribute and be on a National Championship team as a player.”
Then there is the story that happened in between all of that where Swinney grew up poor and homeless and his mother lived with him and his roommate while he was in college. And through it all, Kathleen was right there living his experiences with him.
“Everything they are receiving, they have earned that plus more. That is a very special family,” Phillips said. “He just has a great attitude and persona about him. Kathleen, she is terrific, and I don’t think I have ever met a couple more deserving of the success that they have achieved.
“Dabo and Kathleen, they are just tremendous people. I am just so very proud of them.”