How Clemson writer turned to hurry-up offense to finish book four on Tigers’ success
If you’re planning to write a book in seven days, it helps if you have a head start.
Larry Williams had a sizeable jump when penning “Dabo’s Dynasty: Clemson’s Rise to College Football Supremacy.” How sizeable? Try 14 years and three previous volumes about the Tigers’ program.
That said, even Williams — who has covered Clemson since 2008 for TigerIllustrated.com, plus four previous seasons with the Charleston Post & Courier — admits he never would’ve envisioned such a turnaround.
It helped, he said, in writing about the Tigers’ second national title in two years that much of his research came via his daily coverage. It didn’t hurt, either, that he had built relationships with Clemson’s head coach and staff, in part during the writing of his previous book, “Clemson Tough: Guts and Glory Under Dabo Swinney,” recounting the Tigers’ run to the 2015 College Football Playoff title game.
Still. A week? Seriously?
“Most book publishers, when you’re chronicling a championship season, want it out as soon as possible,” Williams said. “(It’s) not just to capitalize on the (fans’) sensation, but because a lot of other competitors — magazines, etc. — are coming out soon, too.”
Williams believes “Dabo’s Dynasty” is something different from “exploit the moment” publications that often follow a championship run, though. His book, he said, is more “story-telling in depth” about the 2018 season.
“Not to beat my own chest,” he said, “but there’s a reason it’s hard to produce a 50,000-word book (157 pages) from scratch that’s not a rehash.”
His book has plenty of stories from the Tigers’ 15-0 season, capped by their shocking 44-16 demolition of perennial title contender Alabama. What gives Williams’ book more gravitas is off-the-field and behind-the-scenes stories that help put the season — as well as Clemson’s four-year, 55-4 run and Swinney’s rise to iconic stature — into perspective.
Swinney, 49, has created an environment over 10 seasons as head coach that culminated in Clemson’s current position atop college football. In the process, he became the hottest coach in the game — hotter than ‘Bama’s Nick Saban, at least for now.
And as Williams retold 2018, chapters within the narrative also explained who Swinney is, how he was targeted by then-athletics director Terry Don Phillips in 2008 as a head-coach-in-the-making, replacing Tommy Bowden and ultimately lifting Clemson to its current lofty status. And how other pieces of the puzzle — star recruit C.J. Spiller, defensive coordinator Brent Venables, freshman quarterback Trevor Lawrence — fell into place along the way.
His favorite part of the book, Williams said, comes in the chapter “Trevor, Then Turmoil,” about Swinney replacing starting quarterback Kelly Bryant with Lawrence, only to see Lawrence sidelined vs. Syracuse and leaving virtual unknown Chase Brice in charge of a game that might’ve derailed Clemson’s season before it began.
“Brice and the offensive line rescued them,” Williams said of that 27-23 thriller. “Dabo said afterward it was one of the most important wins ever, that his team had ‘the heart of a champion’ and the team grew up that day.
“It was hard to buy all that at the time, but Dabo has tremendous vision, can assess a moment and comprehend it like few others can. He was exactly right about that game; they destroyed everyone from that point on.”
In the end, there’s a feeling of inevitability about the season, one that was hardly obvious or even seemingly realistic to start. Williams’ own part also seems almost preordained.
He and writer Travis Haney combined in 2011 on “A State of Disunion,” about the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry. A year later, Williams wrote “The Danny Ford Years at Clemson: Romping and Stomping,” without cooperation from the legendary former coach.
So when Clemson earned its first playoff berth in 2015, “win or lose, Clemson was a good story; it was about Clemson’s breakthrough and Dabo’s,” Williams said. Publisher History Press approached him in November about “Clemson Tough,” and after the Tigers won the ACC title, “we decided to do the book regardless.” Williams wrote most of it six weeks before Clemson’s semifinal win over Oklahoma, adding chapters about that game and the loss to Alabama afterward.
In 2018, “We said I’d do another book only if Clemson won,” he said — which at the time, Alabama being proclaimed the best college team ever, seemed a long shot. Williams first heard from the publisher in early January, mere weeks before the title game.
The difference: During 2018, Williams had written a series, “A Decade of Dabo,” for TigerIllustrated.com, in which he and Swinney revisited moments from the coach’s unlikely career. Williams decided those stories would forge insightful transitions in the season story; without the 10th anniversary series, he said, the book might not have happened.
When Williams first pitched that series to Swinney in September, “He said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ And he had an impeccable memory,” Williams said. “He recited almost everything that happened that day” in the middle of the 2008 season, when Phillips chose him to succeed Bowden. “And that became a crucial element of the book.
“I told the publisher, ‘Give me two weeks to do the manuscript.’ The day after the championship, I’m in the Denver airport, thinking ‘tomorrow, in addition to doing my day job, I have to get started on 50,000 words.’ ”
Yet by that Friday, he told the publisher he’d be done by the following Tuesday — and was.
“That tells you how rich and easy the story was to tell,” Williams said. “I hadn’t really been preparing to write a book, but in fact, I was (doing that) all season.”
If Williams sounds at times like a Clemson true believer, he says that’s more a testament to Swinney’s work than his own. “I don’t think” it’s hard to be detached, he said. “My job is what can I write that’s different (from his competition), something my subscribers are glad to pay to read. And let’s face it: there hasn’t been a lot of negative to write recently.”
Still, the question remains: Would Williams want to write another book in a week? The answer might surprise you.
“It’s kind of like when you cover a game and you try to write the story during the game,” he said. “It’s usually not as good as if you watch the game, think about it and write it beginning to end.
“With a book, if you start after the season is over, there’s a certain wisdom knowing how it turns out.”
Two months after Clemson’s title, the result is a nuanced story of not just a season, but the building of a program and the ascent of its coach. Williams believes his fourth book is his best.
Clemson fans will let him know. Meanwhile, the 2019 season is six months away. Maybe time to get started again.
To order “Dabo’s Dynasty” directly from Williams, visit www.clemsonfootballbooks.com.
This story was originally published March 29, 2019 at 9:38 AM.