It’s hard to imagine, but what would the football program be like had Dabo Swinney not been in Clemson when Tommy Bowden stepped away at the midway point of the 2008 season?
It was closer to a reality than you might think.
Following the 2007 season, a year in which the Tigers went 9-4, Swinney, who was Clemson’s wide receivers’ coach at the time, came into Terry Don Phillips office and asked for a favor.
“Of course Dabo wanted to be a head coach,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t that he wanted to leave the program or anything, but he was like every other young coach.