Terry Don Phillips hired a kid named Dabo Swinney to coach football at Clemson in 2008. That call, more than any facility plan or budget line, is what people will remember.
But it was the way Phillips made the decision, not just the result, that defined his decade running Clemson athletics. He died Tuesday morning in Clemson. He was 78.
He had been in hospice care after living with dementia for more than a decade. The disease took him slowly, the way it does. He and his wife Tricia spent the years after his diagnosis traveling backroads across the country with their yellow lab, Atticus, and eating a lot of ice cream.
Phillips was not a flashy AD. He did not seek the spotlight. He was a defensive lineman at Arkansas in the late 1960s, a three-year letterman who played in the famous 1969 Texas-Arkansas game.
He earned his undergraduate degree from Arkansas, a master’s and Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, and a law degree from Arkansas in 1996. He taught a sports law class at Clemson the entire time he was there. The man had credentials. He led with evaluation, not ego.
The coaching hires tell the story. Swinney is the winningest football coach in school history. Brad Brownell is the winningest men’s basketball coach. Clemson is the only Division I school where both the current football and basketball head coaches hold those respective records.
Mike Noonan won two national championships with the men’s soccer program, in 2021 and 2023. Swinney won two of his own, in 2016 and 2018. Eddie Radwanski took the women’s soccer program to the 2023 College Cup, the first Final Four appearance by any Clemson women’s program.
Over Phillips’ 10 years, Clemson won 13 ACC championships across eight different sports. Five were women’s programs. Tiger athletic programs posted 57 top-25 national finishes, 37 top-20s and 14 top-10s.
The facility money mattered too. More than $140 million invested over the decade, with only $25 million of debt. The combined unrestricted fund reserve grew roughly 90 percent between 2002 and 2012.
Phillips came to Clemson after eight years as athletic director at Oklahoma State. The Cowboys won a pair of men’s golf national titles, reached the men’s basketball Final Four and made two College World Series appearances during his watch.
Before Stillwater, he built his career slowly. Graduate assistant at Arkansas in 1970. Assistant coach at Virginia Tech from 1971 to 1978, where he worked under future Clemson head coaches Danny Ford and Charley Pell. Then administration at Liberty, Southwestern Louisiana, and back to Arkansas as senior associate AD under Frank Broyles.
Born in Longview, Texas. Raised in East Texas with his two brothers. Phillips was inducted into the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019 and named an honorary alumnus that same day.
He is survived by his wife Tricia, three daughters, a son and multiple grandchildren. A private service will be held at a later date in Quitman, Texas.
