Why Dabo Swinney is moving Clemson’s practice location

It has been nearly two weeks since Clemson opened fall practice and the Tigers are now getting a change of scenery.

Dabo Swinney has moved workouts from Clemson’s normal practice field next to its football operations building to the field at Jervey Meadows, which is beyond centerfield at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

Swinney said the move is done for two reasons.

“One is it’s just so perfect over there. Everything’s just amazing. I just want them to remember where we came from. We come over here and it’s not real perfect. It’s kind of lumpy. We do the best we can,” Swinney said. “I found a rib over there and a chicken wing. There’s no shade. We’ve been going two weeks so this is the point of camp where we’ve got to develop some mental toughness… You see who is going to embrace it. There’s a bunch of gnats out there. You see who is going to embrace it and who is going to give into it.”

The other reason Clemson moves practice is to keep the regular practice fields looking good.

“The second part of that is it gives you a chance to get those fields immaculate, let them recover for a couple of weeks. We won’t go back over there until probably Thursday of next week or we might even wait til game week,” Swinney said. “So when we do get back over there it’s true game prep. I think it’s a better appreciation of what we have and it’ll just have a different feel. Just to kind of change the scenery, change the dynamics a little bit, the variables, and we’ll see how they respond.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2017 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Why Dabo Swinney is moving Clemson’s practice location."