How Gamecocks DC Clayton White evolved into one of college football’s rising stars
There’s no good way to get Cullowhee, North Carolina. It’s out there — wayyyy out there.
Even pinpointing the town that’s home to Western Carolina University and named after a mythical figure in Cherokee lore on a map takes some thought.
Perhaps the best demarcation is that it’s southeast-ish of Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s also semi-west of Asheville, North Carolina and northwest of Greenville, deep in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Trying to locate Cullowhee without the advantages of a navigation system? That’s a challenge all in itself.
“I was almost 15 minutes away, I got off the exit and I went the wrong way,” South Carolina defensive coordinator Clayton White concedes, still kicking himself for being late to an interview with WCU head coach Kent Briggs in 2004.
That White was late for his first college coaching interview is a minor detour in a career that has steadily climbed over almost two decades.
What’s that old saying? The one about surrounding yourself with the right people. White has been one of those “right people” for years.
He played for coaches John Fox and Mike Tomlin during a three-year NFL stint. He later worked for and/or alongside Matt Rhule, Jim Harbaugh, Paul Pasqualoni, Geoff Collins and Dave Doeren.
But as he sits in his office in the Long Family Football Operations Center overlooking South Carolina’s practice fields, you can’t help but think of White as an outlier. In a profession littered with larger-than-life egotists, he’s far from that.
He’s equal parts fastidious and courteous. He’s almost … normal?
“You wish you had 10 Clayton Whites on your staff as a head coach,” Akron head coach Joe Moorhead, who worked with White at UConn, told The State. “That’s not hyperbole. He’s just that good of a person and that good of a coach.”
The beginnings of a coach in small town North Carolina
Dunn, North Carolina, is basketball country, at least it’s supposed to be. Tobacco Road is just an hour drive northwest. Kinston, North Carolina — the hometown Jerry Stackhouse, Brandon Ingram and countless other NBA stars — is only 74 miles due east.
But here in this sleepy corner of a Tar Heel State town of just over 9,000, there’s a secret football history, and White is smack dab in the middle of it.
“I don’t know how we orchestrated it or how we organized it,” White said, laughing. “But it happened on Saturday mornings.”
Each local apartment complex had their squad of kids that raced around the grass patches of Dunn during the mid-1980s. Washington Heights and Dunn Village could hang. Meadowlark and St. John Terrace, too, had their share of talent.
White, 44, assures his team made up of the kids living at McKay Court Apartments, better known locally as “Greenwood” given its proximity to Greenwood Cemetery, weren’t slouches.
“We got after it,” he quipped.
Football has always been White’s fixation, at least on some subconscious level.
He watched his father play running back in a local men’s league in his youth. As a third-grader, he’d swipe notecards from his mother, who was then a student at Johnston Community College, and draw up plays.
That fascination has since spilled into his professional coaching career.
White wowed Briggs and Collins, Western Carolina’s defensive coordinator, with his expansive football knowledge.
He could diagram Xs and Os with the ease of a painter at an easel while interviewing in what Collins quips was an offshoot of the football offices that more closely resembled a closet with a whiteboard than a fancy team facility.
“I think there’s a ton of people with football knowledge, there’s a ton of people that have an ability to teach,” Middle Tennessee State defensive coordinator Scott Shafer, who hired White at Western Michigan and Stanford, told The State. “But with Clayton, (he) checks those two boxes and then, for me at least, the personality was huge.
“... He’s just an unbelievable guy to coach with. Just contagious to be around and the kind of person you look forward to seeing every day at work.”
‘We were young, idealistic and we had a great run’
The nine books sitting on the bottom perch of the black shelving unit just inside White’s USC office door read almost like a Hallmark card dedicated to leadership.
The titles include “Today Matters” and “Everyday Greatness.” “Power for Competing” and “Brain Rules” are mixed in. So, too, are books penned by legendary head coaches Tony Dungy and Urban Meyer.
White has always been an avid learner. It’s part of what’s endeared him to so many in college coaching circles. He’s unapologetically himself and equally unafraid to admit what he doesn’t understand while challenging his own boundaries.
Take his run on staff at UConn in 2011 and 2012 as proof.
White was a defensive coach by nature. Paul Pasqualoni wanted White on his staff, but the only job he had open was a role coaching running backs and working as a special teams coordinator.
“You’re going to have the opportunity to develop your installation process, the details of what you’re going to have to go through,” Pasqualani recalled pitching. “It’s going to be a lot of work, it’s going to take time, but it will be a very, very beneficial experience for you.”
“It was the most influential job that I had,” White said 11 years later. “I was way up there, nobody knew me and I was like, ‘If I mess up, I mess up.’ ”
There’s subtleties to being a special teams coordinator that differ from other coordinator jobs. The role requires overseeing players on offense and defense. It’s also one of the few staff positions outside of a head coach that regularly addresses the entire team.
White rolls his eyes and offers a grin when asked to recount his first spiel at a Huskies team meeting.
“That’s the first time in my coaching career that I’ve been nervous — really shaking nervous,” he said.
He’d spoken in player meetings and other settings in previous jobs. He’d also served as the co-special teams coordinator at Western Kentucky the year before. Speaking in front of a whole team as a solo coordinator, though, was different.
White slugged a gulp of water to calm his nerves and launched into his UConn sermon.
“All right,” he opened, his voice cracking between the first and second syllables.
“The players actually talked about it later,” White joked. “They were like, ‘Coach you were nerrrrrvous.’ ”
One shelf above White’s book collection, four commemorative footballs serve as another reminder of the lengthy resume South Carolina’s second-year defensive coordinator has put together.
There’s a ball emblazoned with logos from the 2019 First Responder Bowl, the final touch on the third year of White’s second stint at Western Kentucky and a 9-4 campaign. N.C. State’s 2014 win over North Carolina and South Carolina’s 2020 drubbing of Eastern Illinois are also commemorated in leather.
The eldest of the four footballs rests in the back right corner of the top shelf. It’s a game ball from Stanford’s upset of No. 1 Southern Cal at the Los Angeles Coliseum on Oct. 6, 2007.
“The last thing I remember about Stanford was when we upset USC (and) Clayton was talking s— with someone in the crowd,” Shafer said through a laugh. “I loved it.”
Not too dissimilar from South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, White is a fierce competitor. But there’s always been that consistent, fun-loving side that’s endeared him to colleagues.
Shafer jokes he and White coached in differing accents at practice to see if players would catch on during their time at Western Michigan. Victorian English? Check. Old man? That too.
White also became a mainstay in annual whitewater rafting trips at Western Carolina.
Before preseason camp started, White, Collins, Rhule and fellow assistants Myron Jackson and Mitch Hall went, as Collins describes it, “roaring” down the Nantahala River.
The photo evidence? That lives on in Collins’ office at Georgia Tech.
“I think (White) and I both got jettisoned out — tossed out — of the boat at one point during the trip,” he said, chuckling at the memory. “It was a fun time. We were young, idealistic, and we had a great run.”
Landing at South Carolina with Shane Beamer
White reaches into the bottom of the three drawers on the right side of his USC office desk and pulls out a folded-up piece of paper.
At first glance, it looks like one of those scattered sheets that tend to pile up this time of year. There’s a bit more to it, he explains.
It’s the notice White received on Jan. 7, 2021, that he’d tested positive for COVID-19. He used the back to plan out what he’d say in his first address at South Carolina.
“I had nothing to write on (for) my very first team meeting,” White said. “So I wrote it on the back of my COVID positive paper.”
White was officially announced as South Carolina’s defensive coordinator on Jan. 10, 2021. How he landed in Columbia, though, is a story in itself.
Beamer had kicked the tires on a few potential defensive coordinator candidates when he first connected with White. They’d known a handful of the same people in coaching circles, leading to recommendations and more formal conversations.
White grew antsy as he awaited an answer. He thought he and Beamer clicked, but figured he wouldn’t hear back for a few days.
He went to take a shower when his phone dinged. It was a text from Beamer — “Call me when you get a chance.” White scrambled to his phone, took a momentary breath and called back.
Beamer had an offer for him.
By the time he could get downstairs to tell his family, White’s wife, Kelly, and kids, Chase and Macy, were there in the living room ready to celebrate.
Chase cued up YouTube on the TV and blared “Sandstorm” from the speakers as soon as White reached the room.
“I talked to a lot of different coaches — not just for defensive coordinator, but all the different positions — and really took my time on it,” Beamer said. “But I kept coming back to Clayton. And I think he’s fantastic.”
White has become a hot commodity in coaching circles. Harbaugh has tried to hire him on more than one occasion. He was also a rumored candidate for a handful of other openings when he left WKU for South Carolina.
That list of suitors will only grow if the Gamecocks’ 2022 defense matches last year’s unit — one that led the Southeastern Conference in takeaways and passing defense and netted White a $200,000 raise this offseason.
Beamer, Pasqualoni, Moorhead, Collins and Shafer all said they think the four-time Broyles Award finalist will be a head coach sooner than later. White readily admits it’s an aspiration of his, but one for down the road.
“I’m in no hurry to be a head coach,” he told The State. “I’ll call the defense here for the next 10 years if they want me to.”
Whether White is in Columbia for another decade or not, he won’t need a meandering mountainous drive and an entire Rolodex to call to find a party interested in hiring him.
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
