Saturday’s game between Clemson and Florida State will renew a rivalry that’s already been played out 33 times. Dabo Swinney has been involved in 17 of those.
If not for one of the Tigers’ most memorable wins in the series nearly two decades ago, that might not have been the case. And Swinney’s highly successful 13-year tenure as Clemson’s head coach may have never happened.
In 2003, Swinney was in his first season at Clemson as an assistant on Tommy Bowden’s staff. That year started off rocky for the Tigers, who were 5-4 overall and .500 in conference play heading into November. Clemson was coming off unimpressive back-to-back seven-win seasons under Bowden, so speculation about his job security swirled.
It was feeling like a case of deja vu for Swinney, who just three years earlier had lost his job as Alabama’s receivers coach when Mike DuBose was fired in Tuscaloosa. Without a major turnaround in Bowden’s fourth season at Clemson, Swinney figured he’d be out of another coaching job. And the odds of that happening weren’t in the Tigers’ favor with No. 3 Florida State looming.
“You start out 5-4, and there could be some doubt,” Swinney said.
Complicating matters for Swinney was the fact he was in the process of building a house in Clemson. Even the contractors, Swinney recalled, were aware of a situation that could’ve become fluid for him in a hurry.
Swinney still vividly remembers meeting with them at lunchtime one day during the week of the Florida State game, which came on the heels of Clemson’s 45-17 loss at Wake Forest. As Swinney was getting ready to leave that meeting, a builder informed him that another buyer had been lined up in case things went south.
“I’ll never forget it. It made me mad,” Swinney recalled. “I was like, ‘Let me tell you something, we’re moving into this house, OK?’”
That Saturday, Clemson didn’t just upset the Seminoles. The Tigers suffocated them, holding FSU to 11 rushing yards in a 26-10 win that gave Bowden his first head-to-head win over his father, the late Bobby Bowden, in the Bowden Bowl.
“I remember that whole week and thinking, ‘We’ve got enough to beat these guys,’” Swinney said. “And it was just a magical night. We got it done, and we got on a run.”
It triggered a late-season surge for Clemson, which hammered Duke and South Carolina in its final two regular-season games by a combined score of 103-24. The Tigers rode that momentum to another upset — this one over No. 6 Tennessee — in the Peach Bowl as Clemson finished that season 9-4.
The younger Bowden parlayed that into a three-year contract extension, pushing his deal through the 2010 season. That meant Swinney and his family got to move into that house.
“We lived there for 14 years before we moved in ‘17,” Swinney said. “Those were great memories. Challenging times that year. But great memories, and it made us better.”
Swinney remained on Bowden’s staff and eventually took over as interim coach once Bowden resigned midway through the 2008 season. Swinney took over the job permanently in 2009, and the rest is history.
“That was a fork in the road,” Swinney said of that 2003 game against FSU. “That’s life. But, hey, God’s always got the right answers. He’s got the plan. It’s never our plan. It’s always his plan, and, man, I’m really thankful for that because I’ve had a lot of plans along the way that I’m really glad they didn’t work out.”
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