Dabo Swinney still remembers his first time on the recruiting trail in South Carolina.
It was the spring of 2003, shortly after he’d been hired as a 33-year-old receivers coach at Clemson. Making the rounds at local high schools, Swinney, usually donning attire with Clemson’s paw logo, felt a degree of animosity from half of the people with which he came in contact.
Yet Swinney wasn’t all that surprised.
“People (in South Carolina) didn’t know me, but as soon as I walked in the school, half the people didn’t like me,” Swinney said. “‘Oh, it’s their Clemson guy.’ You know?”
In the nearly two decades since, Swinney, who’s been Clemson’s head coach for most of that time, has gotten used to catching ugly looks from a portion of the state that supports the Tigers’ in-state rival. He’ll coach in his 19th Palmetto Bowl on Saturday when Clemson and South Carolina renew their rivalry at Memorial Stadium.
For Swinney, though, he didn’t necessarily need all of those matchups to know what things would be like when he made the move to South Carolina all of those years ago. A Pelham, Alabama native, Swinney grew up in the thick of a rivalry that’s equally as bitter.
Swinney used some hyperbole this week to emphasize that point.
“When you grow up in Alabama, that’s it,” Swinney said in reference to the Alabama-Auburn rivalry. “You don’t even leave the hospital. You’ve got to declare right there. Which way are you going? They put it right on your birth certificate. Otherwise you just stay in the hospital. They don’t let you leave.”
In all seriousness, Swinney said, it’s the reason why embracing the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry has come organically to him. Beyond the allegiances that normally come with fandom in Southern states where professional sports don’t exist, Swinney, a receiver on Gene Stallings’ Alabama teams of the early 1990s, was part of 13 Iron Bowls as a player and a coach for the Crimson Tide before his time at his alma mater ended in 2000 following then-Alabama coach Mike DuBose’s resignation.
“It’s just in your blood. You live with it,” Swinney said. “I’ve been on both sides of it, so I get it. I know how it is. I’ve won them and lost them. Won some on the last play and lost some on the last play. Won some big and lost some big. I’ve experienced every part of it. And when you grow up in a place like Alabama and you come to South Carolina, it’s no different. I’t’s exactly the same.”
Swinney has had more success than failure against Clemson’s biggest rival. Swinney won his first Palmetto Bowl as the Tigers’ interim coach in 2008 before Clemson lost five straight to Carolina. But the last eight years have belonged to Clemson, which has won seven straight meetings with the Gamecocks (the teams didn’t play each other in 2020 when the SEC played conference-only schedules in response to the coronavirus pandemic).
A win Saturday would give Clemson the longest winning streak in the series on either side. Regardless how things play out then, Swinney has been part of these kinds of games long enough that he’s prepared for the impact that will be felt throughout the state.
“Coming here was a very natural thing for me,” Swinney said. “It just felt normal that people don’t like you. And it felt normal to go on the road recruiting the state and have people instantly judge you because you have a logo on your shirt. … It’s a big deal to a lot of people.”
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