Sweet Home Alabama runs deep for Dabo
If Walter Riggs was the father of Clemson football, would Alabama be Mama?
Any discussion of Dabo Swinney’s Alabama roots wouldn’t be complete without an understanding of his place in the line of succession at Clemson and the influences of Sweet Home Alabama.
Most of those who preceded him as head coach were nurtured in the state of Alabama, and more than half of Clemson’s football history has been influenced by men with ties to the University of Alabama.
Riggs, an engineering professor, brought football from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (Auburn) in the final years of the 19th century. Each of the three subsequent head coaches also came from Auburn including John W. Heisman, the trophy’s namesake. On Heisman’s watch Clemson beat Alabama in three consecutive seasons. There have been 13 additional games over the last 111 seasons and Alabama won all 13 including four during the 1930’s when former Alabama assistant coach Jess Neely was head coach at Clemson.
In 1931, Neely hired Frank Howard, a former Alabama lineman. Howard replaced Neely after the 1939 season and remained at Clemson for 43 years, 30 as head coach. Howard and legendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant were friends, and Swinney was born into a home where Bryant and the Crimson Tide were worshipped.
As a kid, Swinney paraded around the neighborhood during the season in his Alabama gear, which included a big hat and the foam finger. He and his father would follow the games on football Saturdays then watch the highlights on Bryant’s TV show Sunday mornings. Swinney dreamed of playing for the old coach, yet a photo of Howard at his mother’s birthday party has been treasured for years.
Bryant retired in ill health after the 1982 season and died the next January. Swinney was 13. He remembers crying. No shame. Grown men cried that day including Danny Ford, the coach at Clemson. Ford was an offensive lineman under Bryant at Alabama and possibly more remarkable as a story of the time than Swinney now.
After Howard retired from coaching to become full-time athletic director, he hired former Alabama halfback Hootie Ingram to replace him. Ingram served as coach for three seasons without distinction and eventually returned to Alabama as athletic director. His legacy, however, was to introduce the Tiger Paw as the iconic symbol of Clemson athletics. Howard then hired Red Parker from The Citadel to replace Ingram, and in 1976 Parker hired former Alabama defensive tackle Charley Pell to coach the Clemson defense. Parker was fired after the season, and Pell replaced him.
Pell hired Ford to coach the offensive line. When Pell left without warning after two seasons for Florida, Ford was plucked from the chorus line at age 29. In his first game, the 1978 Gator Bowl, he beat Ohio State and ended the career of legendary coach Woody Hayes.
Ford had already won a national championship as they mourned Bryant’s passing. Swinney, still determined to play for the Crimson Tide, somehow survived the tumult at home created by his father’s struggle with alcoholism. A three-sport standout at Pelham High and an honor student, he scraped together the money to attend Alabama with the intention of becoming a doctor, perhaps a pediatrician. At the time, football was a pipe dream.’
Alabama tried to stay within the family, hiring Ray Perkins as Bryant’s successor, but a chance to return to the NFL gave him an easy out after four seasons of listening to fans grumble because he wasn’t Bear. Next came former Georgia Tech coach Bill Curry who left for Kentucky after three seasons when, despite a 10-2 record and a share of the SEC title, he was offered an insulting contract that gutted control of the program. After watching Curry’s final team during his freshman season, Swinney decided to audition for the team. Gene Stallings, who played for Bryant at Texas A&M, replaced Curry. His bearing was near enough to Bryant’s, down to the gravely bass, that it was eerie.
Ford was fired after the ’89 season so Woody McCorvey, who had been on the Clemson staff, hooked on with Stallings and became Swinney’s position coach. Swinney’s mother left Pelham and moved into an apartment with him in Tuscaloosa and took cleaning jobs. Swinney maintained his grades, prepared for football and worked part-time cutting grass and cleaning gutters. He lettered for three seasons and earned a scholarship his senior year. Alabama won a national championship that season, and though he caught only seven passes as a reserve receiver, Swinney had Stallings’ respect.
By then he had switched majors to commerce and business administration. Stallings asked him to remain as a graduate assistant. After practice in August 1983, Swinney proposed to his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen, at the foot of the bell tower as the Denny Chimes sounded 10 o’clock.
Over the next three years he worked on an MBA and began to build his coaching portfolio. Stallings offered him a full-time job coaching receivers for the 1996 season at an annual salary of $38,000. Stallings resigned after the season in the wake of an NCAA investigation into charges of falsifying a player’s eligibility, but Swinney was retained by Mike DuBose, who faced an uphill battle.
Alabama was placed on probation for three years, lost 30 scholarships over four seasons and forfeited eight wins and a tie. The penalties hamstrung the program for nearly a decade with Alabama suffering three losing seasons over the next decade. When Dubose was fired after the 2000 season, Swinney was out of work.
His fallback was to put that MBA to use, so Swinney joined a firm owned by a former teammate and helped develop commercial properties. The money was good, and the Swinneys were building their dream home in Birmingham when Tommy Bowden offered him a job as receivers coach at Clemson for the 2003 season. Swinney had tried to suppress the void after football, believing it was call to duty.
Bowden was born in Birmingham when his father, Bobby Bowden, was an assistant coach at Howard College (Samford University). He attended elementary school in Birmingham and during an extensive apprenticeship as an assistant coach he returned to Alabama as offensive coordinator when Swinney was a freshman.
After Nick Saban stole Burton Burns off Bowden’s staff, he later tried to hook Swinney. Bowden and athletic director Terry Don Phillips gave Swinney a hefty raise and made him assistant head coach. When Bowden agreed to resign mid-season 2008, he recommended Swinney be given a chance to succeed him. Phillips was already impressed with Swinney’s energy when they met for the official interview. Swinney blew him away with his attention to detail.
Once he had the job, Swinney’s first calls for help went to McCorvey, his former position coach, and longtime friend Danny Pearman, a tight end at Clemson under Ford and a former assistant at Alabama. As associate athletic director for football administration, McCorvey serves as a trusted adviser. Pearman, assistant head coach, special teams and tight ends coach, was on the staff with Swinney at Alabama.
Speculation will again percolate about whether Swinney might eventually return to Alabama as Saban’s successor. Reminders of his Alabama roots are all around him: his family, the people who work for him, the house in Clemson which is identical to the one they were finishing in Birmingham when Bowden called. His contract runs through the 2021 season, into his youngest son’s senior year in high school.
Bryant has been quoted as saying that he returned to Alabama because “Mama called, and when Mama calls, you got to come a runnin’,” but Swinney is a different cat. Riggs was an academic and rose to become Clemson president. Heisman was an intellect known to inspire his team by speaking as if reciting Shakespearean couplets. Neely graduated from Vanderbilt with a law degree and spent most of his career at Rice. Howard, who entered Alabama on an academic scholarship, possessed a quick wit and was notoriously frugal. Tough and cagey, Ford won a national title at 33 and was out of the game by 50.
Swinney has built the Clemson program with an eye toward sustainability, and he’s not inclined to walk away until he feels there’s nothing more to accomplish. Plus, he saw the difficulty others had in following a legend at Alabama.
Arguably he has been independent since high school, so it wouldn’t be surprising that if Mama called she’d have to understand when he declined.
This story was originally published January 7, 2017 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Sweet Home Alabama runs deep for Dabo."