One Fan’s Point of View
Welcome back to installment number 3 of the Most Impactful Games in my fandom since 1995. In the previous two, we spoke of games pre-Dabo Swinney: Part 1 being the Tennessee Peach Bowl in 2003 and Part 2, the close loss to Matt Ryan and the Boston College Eagles on what could have been Clemson’s first ACC Division Championship ever. And also the first shot at an ACC Crown since 1991; four years before my fandom began.
#3 in my career as a fan of the Clemson Tigers (chronologically) is the 2008 game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Most fans know or can deduce that the October 18th, 2008 game against the Jackets was the first for William Christopher “Dabo” Swinney as the Interim Head Coach.
The previous Saturday was marred by a tremendously lackluster performance at Wake Forest (a 12-7 loss in Winston-Salem) which led Athletics Director Terry Don Phillips to have a “talk” to Head Coach Tommy Bowden. Coach Bowden would resign following that conversation and Phillips placed the interim tag on an unknown wide receivers coach who went to Alabama.
Clemson entered the game at 3-3 on the season. After coming into the season highly touted, Nick Saban and Alabama would give a wood-shed-like beating to the Tigers in the season opener in Atlanta. Wins against The Citadel, NC State, and SC State would lead to back-to-back losses to Maryland and Wake Forest leading to the removal of Bowden.
Not many in Clemson knew who Dabo Swinney was other than stories that started leaking out that week about how he was selling commercial real estate in between coaching jobs, and that Tommy Bowden was his position coach while they were both at the University of Alabama.
Most of the fanbase would think that Phillips was going to conduct a national search. From my vantage point in my (just over) decade’s worth of fandom, names like Gary Patterson at TCU or Bud Foster at Virginia Tech were names that I desired to lead Clemson into the future. There was zero chance that this young receivers coach would get a shot at the job past 2008. I am glad I am not a betting man because I would have bet the farm that Swinney would be out and some huge name would come to Tiger Town.
To the game. Georgia Tech entered the game at 5-1 and was still running that Paul Johnson triple-option boring offense that caused fits in the Atlantic Coast Conference for years. This would be a huge test for Dabo, on a short week at the helm, and his staff. Vic Koennig (currently DC at Louisiana Monroe) would lead the defense, while Dabo made a quick change on the offensive side of the ball removing Rob Spence (now the offensive coordinator at Georgetown) and all of his tunnel screens and replacing him with interim Coordinator Billy Napier (now the head coach at Florida).
“Some will miss him, most are glad the move was made…”
ESPN announcer had the above quote during the opening of the game. It was in regard to Tommy Bowden’s firing…er…resignation. As soon as he made the quote, cameras panned to Dabo Swinney as he got off of the famed buses and ran right up to the rock grabbed it with two hands, and gave it a huge kiss before pointing to the sky. The beginning of the Dabo Swinney era.
As far as the game is concerned, it ended as a 21-17 loss, and the Tigers committed five turnovers, but that wasn’t important. There was a new life in Death Valley that day. The offense, although turning the ball over, played with a little bit of moxie. They took chances on that side of the ball. The defense was flying around the field making plays against that childhood offense that Georgia Tech employed.
When researching the game it was lost on me that Willy Korn was the starter going into that game before throwing two interceptions and injuring himself before making way for Cullen Harper. Harper would be the starter the rest of the way.
In past remembrances of games, I went into details about what happened throughout. There is no real need to go quarter by quarter for this one. This game was more about who than the result. Dabo Swinney’s first game. Hindsight is 20/20 as the old saying goes, but looking back and seeing the team play with energy in that first game for Swinney, it was obvious to most that if he was going to go down, he was going to go down swinging.
Of course, the fans would have loved for it to be a victory on that October afternoon, there were four more victories for the rest of the season including one against South Carolina. A bowl loss to Nebraska attempted to sour the season, but again, the team played hard for Dabo.
In December of 2008, Terry Don Phillips lifted the interim tag off of Dabo Swinney and named him the head coach, and the rest, as they say, is history.
