Edited with transcript.

Yall just listen to The Man.

Radio Interview via SportsTalk Rewind

Transcript:

(first question is cut off)

I'd be scared to death of playing Maryland because they have their number. Certain teams can have your number and you be a lot better, and they still beat you.

Theres questions about Clemson on the message boards, they're 2-3 and theres alot of doubts about the program. How do you see Dabo because he's alot like you were? How do you see this program right now?

I think number one, anybody is gonna say in the administration or athletically that we wont never do nothing in the middle of the season and we always evaluate at the end of the year. I know they said that two years ago with Bowden, Bowden prolly pulled the rug out from under them on that, but people are pretty nervous at Clemson because of his overall record, because he's young, because of his coaching staff....they havent had success because he hasn't ran Ellington more than the other young man and all this and that and whatever.

The only thing that will cure any of that is a win. But, NC State is alot better than they've been, Maryland has been tough against Clemson, Florida State is getting better every week and they gotta play down there, Carolina is better than they've been playing. They kinda beat em last year in the cycle and they've got to play up here this year but that doesnt mean a whole lot if the other team is a whole lot better. They know they may not win 1 or 2 more football games, then there is really gonna be some talk.

Everybody just has to sit tight and the people will let you know whether you're doing a good job or not if they come to the football game on Saturday.

Now Coach when you look at it, you said "I coached the OLine, I coached what I knew how to coach and let other more experienced guys coach (their jobs), knowing I'm the head coach, but I stayed out of it." Do you think Dabo isn't doing that by hiring a young coordinator, maybe having too many inexperienced assistants?

The first 2 football games Billy Napier was becoming a small Spurrier; he was becoming a genius offensively. Then, the last 2, the last 3 games, everybody questions why they did this, why they did that. I think Billy Napier is a bright young man but now whether he's ready to do what he's doing and continue, that will show up and W's and L's will decide that. That will decide who coaches at Clemson. I don't think you can have a bad year after 9 years of Coach Bowden, keeping a lot of the same coaches and be an average football team or below in your 2nd year and somebody don't think you don't need to make some kind of change. Now that might be the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, a position coach, but you can't be satisfied with that. You cant be satisfied as a head coach surveying and those seats (be empty). They may be selling those tickets but if they dont show up... thats easy to see by how many people are in the stands.

Now I hope it doesnt come to that and I hope Clemson runs the table and everybody has a happy Christmas and a happy Thanksgiving and all that. 

The truth of the matter is very simple, this is the way I'd always try to put it. A head coach is like being a used car salesman, new car salesman, or an insurance salesman: if I don't sell so many cars, then I aint gonna eat. If i dont sell enough my bossman is gonna get rid of me, thats the way the thing works. Its no different from any other job that you have to work for a living. If I dont produce and dont carry your load, you cant expect to maintain and be kept around.

We talked before about Woody McCorvey, a guy thats mature, a sidebar for Dabo at times, and you (living) in the area...is this a situation where Dabo needs to come to a guy like Woody or yourself for help? Or does it seem like he's stubborn and wont do stuff like that?

Well you have to use your resources. You don't need to come to me til you win a game because I don't want to take credit for what you're doing right now.

Woody has plenty of sense. He coached for me and he's been a coordinator in coaching a long time and he's welcome to my house anytime. But it don't matter if you dont wanna listen. You gotta listen. Don't ask if you don't wanna listen, and if you do ask for advice then be prepared to take the advice and act on it. Thats the only way i would ever wanna talk with anybody.

If somebody came to me for some kind of advice on the cow business, I'd say do you wanna take my advice? But if you're here and you need some help about cattle, I can tell you what I know about cattle. You can use it or not and you're wasting my time and your time if you say you like my cattle and don't take my advice.

But just doing it to me to tell somebody you did it, or to try to take pressure off of yourself or whatever, thats a waste of time. I've done things like that before and come to watch their practice to have pictures in the paper, that was a long time ago, and i've seen enough practices and don't care to see any more football practices and I dont wanna sit there and watch them, and i've been invited to all of them, because they dont believe what i believe. Thats number 1. I'm wasting my time and they're wasting their time.

I wanna say this coach, you talked about you had a way of doing things back in the 80s that was the signature of Clemson football. It was running the football, it was being physical up front, hitting people in the mouth and playing great defense.  It just seems to me that since Coach Bowden was there and now Dabo that they've gotten away from those concepts: that the way you win football games is to hit people in the mouth, be physical up front, and gotten too fancy with their offense. I think thats their biggest problem.

I think they go no-backs too quick and I've heard people say its hard to be physical when you ain't got a back in there. I think people say they throw the ball too-quick. I think Parker was like 21 out of 37 or something and thats not a bad percentage, but 37 times is just too many times to throw the football.

If you're dictating what you want to do on offense you ain't got to do it that many times. That sounds like a catch-up mode to me. I think some people have the feeling that they got into that too early. If you can't get 3 or 4 yards a clip and you can't maintain clock control, ball control, then you'll never be able to determine your destination. Somebody always has a chance of dropping the football, QB always has a chance of throwing a bad one, theres always a chance of throwing a sack, and theres just a lot of things that can happen. If you can line up and run it and average 3 yards a carry then nobody can take the ball away from you offensively. Its humanly impossible.

I noticed South Carolina running out of the I, they got some big wins with Lattimore young man in there and he seems like an awfully good one and its made Garcia a better QB  and a better QB throwing the football because now everyone knows they ain't going to run the ball every time.

End of Transcript.

Danny Ford never shied away from hard work. When The Post and Courier's Travis Sawchik reached him recently, the former Clemson football coach was underneath his lawnmower making a repair. Ford remains the youngest football coach to win a national title, leading the Tigers to their only national championship as a 34-year-old at the 1982 Orange Bowl. His 11-year run at Clemson, which included a 96-29-4 overall record, is considered a golden era of Clemson football.

Clemson is coming off its first Atlantic Division title with a young head coach. What is the most difficult part of maintaining success?

"The more you win, the more people want to try and beat you. That would be the main thing. You have to be able to handle the challenges presented to you when people think you are the best team in the league."

Dabo Swinney recently talked about some of his learning experiences during his first 21 games. What were some of your early learning experiences?

"It wasn't real hard those first years because we had a lot of players back. It's never hard until you lose, that's when it gets hard -- when you get to losing and trying to turn it back around. The hardest thing in the world, which I don't think either of us has had to do (at Clemson) -- we had to do it at Arkansas -- is convince people they can win when they are getting beat so bad, and build confidence in them. The only way to do that is to win and it just takes time. If you don't have the players you have to get the players."

What made you successful as a coach?

"I think the best thing we did was work. Hard work. We believed in being physical. That was something we were taught growing up. That was something we were taught playing ball. That you could out-work people, that you could out-hit people. I don't believe I ever lost that. … I've had coaches come and say we are working them too hard, we are doing this too much and we need to back off. That just wasn't what we were going to do. We knew we had a system that would work. … If I was coaching today, I wouldn't change."

Clemson sports information director Tim Bourret feels you didn't get credit for your in-game adjustments. What are some elements of coaching, whether it be game management or something else, you felt you didn't get credit for?

"I got plenty of credit, more so than I deserved. I never worried about that. My coaches did all the work and my players did all the playing. All I was really responsible for was getting them to the game on Saturday. The coaches have the game plan. All I wanted to do is make sure we followed their plan and that we had tough enough practice during the week that the ball game was easy."

What would it take for Clemson to win another national title?

"I don't know that Clemson will ever win another national championship. I don't know that we would have won another national championship. They are just so hard to win. We had good players, and good games and good luck, too. … That is a long way off for Clemson at this particular time. What they need to do is -- they did a pretty good job of it last year -- they need to learn how to win at home. They need to learn how to win on the road and win the conference championship. That would put them back to where they would be a top-10 football team every year. It's out of reach until they become a consistent winner and (contend) for a conference championship every year. … (Clemson) doesn't have a resource problem. They have as good of facilities as anyone in the country. They have great support. They have a lot of things people don't have. They just need to recruit very well, develop football players, and learn to win."

What's changed the most about the game?

"I guess just the time limits and limiting practices. I think they have three two-a-days this year and I think we would always have six or seven."

If you were commissioner of college football for a day, what would you change?

"You don't have time and I don't either … I just hope they don't water down the product, the product of teaching the players and spending the time with them you need to develop them and stuff like that. You can't work too hard."

What are your thoughts on the job Swinney has done thus far?

"They've done a nice job. The only thing about a football coach or basketball coach -- what's the last thing you've done? The last thing they've done is win a bowl game so they are on a positive note. They get beat by Presbyterian (Sept. 11), that would be a helluva bad note. That's what you have to guard against -- not having too many bad notes. Just don't lose. It's all about winning."

Click it.

Ford to Hatfield 

 - Video File Link, if you have not seen this before you should.

Jan 9 1990, Clemson reveals it is under NCAA inquiry also here

The Clemson University football program is being accused by the National Collegiate Athletic Association of more than a dozen illegal recruiting contacts and of giving players up to $150 in cash from 1984 to 1988, an N.C.A.A. report released today said.

In the most damaging recruiting allegation, the N.C.A.A. says that from November 1984 to September 1987, six coaches made 11 illegal recruiting contacts, which included meeting with four high school juniors and one sophomore. The N.C.A.A. does not allow college coaches to recruit players in person until after the players are no longer juniors.

Jan 19, 1990 from the NYT

Danny Ford, armed with a $1 million settlement from Clemson, resigned under pressure today, ending an 11-year coaching tenure that attracted national prominence and a National Collegiate Athletic Association inquiry.

''I deny any wrongdoing on my part,'' Ford said today. ''And I am confident that an impartial review of the facts will so prove.''

''We have honest differences of opinion on certain basic aspects of the football program,'' Robinson said. ''A separation under any terms would be difficult. An amicable parting is certainly less painful for all involved. That is why we felt it was in the university's best interests to agree to a fair settlement under the terms of Ford's contract and bring the matter to a close.''

While the last post was backed up by more fact, there is much more to the firing of Ford than will ever be written anywhere and factually proven to be true. Some of it shouldn't be written about. Per Ford himself, Robinson wasnt even in the room when he was let go, it was between him and President Max Lennon. The NCAA investigation was a cover and an excuse for Lennon to remove him, and a plausible one after SMU had just been demolished by the Death Penalty. 

All we know for sure is that Ford was kicked out and later 1988 recruit and top player in Louisiana, QB Michael Carr, transferred in Spring of 1990 to UTEP, and later got on dope, and quit football altogether in 1991.

How hard others in Ford's program have worked is apparently up for debate, because just before this season began the NCAA opened a preliminary inquiry into Clemson's recruiting of redshirted freshman quarterback Michael Carr from Amite. La. In August, Carr's high school coach, Gary Hendry, accused Clemson of cheating when it wooed Carr, specifically questioning how Carr, from humble environs, had obtained a Toyota Supra. Later, Carr's brother said the car was his. Carr left campus and went home briefly to Amite. When he returned to Clemson, he called Hendry a liar and said Hendry was merely bitter because the coach had wanted Carr to go to LSU. The furor has died down, but the NCAA is still investigating the program.

From SportsIllustrated dated 10-23-89, also dated August 21 1989 is another news article about Carr where he denies anything, as well as his brother.

Most of these articles require you to be a member/subscriber or to purchase the article to read the full extent, but the general idea is pretty clear.


Bobby Robinson had little to do with hiring Ken Hatfield, but that doesn't make me forgive him, you see his weaselness in the clip. His first choice for the job was probably Fisher DeBerry, instead of DC Bill Oliver or Chuck Reedy. I believe if you're going to fire the best coach in school history, you should stick to hiring from within the first time. As such, Lennon picked Hatfield, and most of us despised him from day one. The Board publicly stated in 1990 that they backed Lennon 100%. I doubt Robinson could've come to the conclusion of Hatfield within 4 days, even in the midst of recruiting season, so I lend some belief to this argument.

Even if some BOT members opposed the firing, as I'm sure some did, they are on record with this statement. They share Lennon's guilt. Robinson's weaselish comments at the time implicate him in my eyes too, no matter what any other fan or former player says. He only refused Hatfield's contract extension because IPTAY donations had fallen like a rock.

On May 31, 1990 Clemson was given a slap on the paw.

In brief, the committee found that on at least two occasions during the fall of 1985, one student-athlete in the sport of football received and distributed cash payments ranging between $50 and $70 to another student-athlete in the sport of football under circumstances that the university acknowledged as a violation and for which the university accepted responsibility. In addition, the committee found that in the spring of 1987, the same student-athlete who received the foregoing payments received an additional $50 cash payment from a representative of the university's athletics interests. Finally, the committee found several secondary violations, including: a violation concerning the length of official visits; an illegal recruiting contact by a representative of the university's athletics interests; two instances in which student hosts furnished souvenir items to recruits during official visits, and several instances of members of the athletics department staff providing impermissible local automobile transportation and, on one occasion, arranging a meal for a prospective student-athlete who was attending a session of the university's summer football camp.

 

The committee determined that the three instances of cash payments to an enrolled student-athlete in the sport of football constituted major violations of NCAA legislation.

Since Carr was in HS at this time, he does not appear connected in any way to the NCAA violation. However, as you'll see below, the violations occured at the Independence Bowl in 1985.

1990 Sanctions against Clemson - full document

Normally major violations would've subjected us to further punishment, but the NCAA deemed the case unique.

Three factors led the committee to find that this case was unique to some degree and to impose penalties that differed from the list of minimum penalties set forth in NCAA legislation. First, as mentioned previously, the case presented to the committee for hearing consisted of only two major violations, involving three limited cash payments to an enrolled student-athlete, together with several secondary violations that were not argued to amount to a major violation. Absolutely no evidence of any other violation was presented to the committee. The two major violations were somewhat limited in nature, and no pattern of cash payments to enrolled student-athletes was established. Secondly, the major violations that were established do not, in and of themselves, demonstrate a lack of institutional control under the circumstances found in this case and were violations that otherwise could have occurred in a program that was operating in accordance with NCAA legislation.

The Specific rules violations

A. [NCAA Bylaw 16.12.2.3]

 

On at least two occasions during the fall of 1985, a student-athlete received and distributed cash payments, which ranged from between $50 [Page 4] and $70, to a selected member of the university's intercollegiate football team; further, at the hearing, the university admitted that given the circumstances surrounding the payments, a violation had occurred, and the university accepted responsibility for it. Specifically, during the fall of 1985, at the time the university's intercollegiate football team was participating in the 1985 Independence Bowl football game, the student-athlete gave an undetermined amount of cash to another student-athlete in the young man's motel room in Shreveport, Louisiana; further, on one other occasion during the fall of 1985, the first student-athlete gave an undetermined amount of cash to the second student-athlete for the young man's personal use.

An enrolled student-athlete giving money to another who happens to be on the football team? Possibly related to the bowl payout or prize.

B. [NCAA Bylaw 16.12.2.3]

On one occasion in the spring of 1987, a representative of the university's athletics interests gave $50 cash to a student-athlete for his personal use. Specifically, the representative gave $50 to the young man on the university's football practice field at the conclusion of an intrasquad football scrimmage.

A booster gave money to a player.

C. [NCAA Bylaw 13.6.2]

 

In November 1985, following the official paid visit to the university's campus of a prospective student-athlete, the young man was permitted to use the airline ticket provided by the university to return home, even though the young man remained on the university's campus for one night after the permissible 48-hour period.

D. [NCAA Bylaws 13.1.2.1 and 13.1.3.5-(c)]

 

During the summer of 1987, a representative of the university's athletics interests (booster) personally contacted a prospective student-athlete off campus for recruiting purposes at the young man's home during a period in which an in-person recruiting contact was not permissible.

 

There is no record I can find of who this booster might be, or which player is involved. It could possibly be Carr. The 1985 violation could not have been Carr.

The rest of the violations are secondary to my knowledge, and involve things like gifts of hats or apparel to recruits from assistant football coaches, or a ride to the airport, or a cheap meal. These things continue even today and are self-reported.

Ford's staff was fully cleared in 1990 of wrongdoing, as they had to be at the time to attain another NCAA job within 5 years. Why do you think Danny was able to even be hired at Arkansas?

Max Lennon was forced to resign in the February of 1994, when the faculty finally became fed up with his policy of hiring more and more administrators and giving them much bigger raises than faculty members were getting. It was the Faculty Senate President at Clemson who persuaded the Senate to call off a resolution of no confidence, then upped the ante by telling President Lennon that he would call a General Faculty meeting to consider the no-confidence resolution if Lennon did not resign. A major rumor about why Lennon was let go has to deal with his "cooking the books," there may be some truth to this, but we may never know. Lennon eventually ended up at Mars Hill.

Rumors say Danny was asked by a few Board members in 1999 to take it after Tommy West was fired, and told what he had to do to get it back. They've (people like Joe Cobb, or Scott Rhymer) heard the words from Ford himself. I never asked the man to find out when I had breakfast with him to confirm or deny any of this, because I figured it was best to let it be and he'd be tired of such talk by now. Some say Robinson tried in vain to get him back. The public proclamation of doing it for free, before Bowden was hired, was part of that. Then quickly, in secret, they held a meeting whose outcome was the statement that "the new coach cannot have been investigated by the NCAA."

They stabbed him in the back again. It was the members of the BOT, who had the final say, who were also still in Lennon's corner (though he was fired in '94) over the ordeal, who stabbed the man in the back. Still, they were scared of this man and what he could do with the support of the Clemson fanbase. What other reason is there?

Had this not happened in '99, Danny Ford would be back in some capacity for Clemson right now. If the University is going to allow Dabo Swinney to create support staff positions, then why don't they get their act together and give Danny Ford something? Its time to heal those wounds.

Frank Howard was an "Ambassador" for Clemson from the time he retired until the day he died, and Coach Ford's legacy will live longer than any administrator we've had in the last 75 years, the man deserves to be acknowledged.

There would be nothing better for me than to see Coach Ford rolling around campus on a golf cart shaking hands in his muddy high-water jeans.

Make it happen Dabo.

Danny Ford Retirement Banquet - Rodney Williams

Danny Ford Retirement Banquet speech

I don't understand why Clemson won't give Danny Ford the freaking respect that he deserves, as the ACC has given him the LEGEND status.  Read this article for the Q&A by Bob Gillespie (credit www.thestate.com).  My favorite portion is:

Q: Clemson hasn't won an ACC championship since 1991. Why has it been so long?

A: In my opinion, a lot of them didn't play Clemson football. I mean, if you say Ohio State to me, I know what Ohio State football is, I know how they play through reputation, what it meant. And I know what Clemson football was about, and I never saw it (in recent seasons).

Clemson football isn't fancy. Clemson football is having a good kicking game, winning with the kicking game, hit(ting) you on defense, don't turn the ball over and be(ing) able to control the ball. Now, they do it different than we did; they control the ball with the pass better than we did; we did it with the run, shorten(ed) the game.

(In recent seasons) it was always trying to be too cute, outcoach you. You don't outcoach people. You might outwork people, might out-hit people, you might out-fundamental people. But if you think you're smart, there's always someone on the other side just as smart, maybe smarter. It ain't what you know, it's how those kids perform. You got to have that philosophy, and I think I've seen it more (this season).

They've gotten back to it a little bit - not enough for me, but I don't coach anymore (laugh). If they win (the ACC), more power to them, congratulations, and don't forget how you got there.

You all know how much respect we have for Coach Ford (see Danny Ford section), and how pissed we still are at Lennon and Robinson and the BOT for the early 1990 debacle--which, BTW, that '90 team probably would have won it all had they left Frod alone, but that is a different story for a different day.  I am extremely eager to see Coach Ford get honored this weekend.  Clemson ought to have his name and a big Block-C on the side of the stadium.  It is a travesty that my university shuns the man who put Clemson football on the map.

Coach Ford is the man who gave us hope, dreams, championships, and my favorite Clemson moment:

Danny Ford can be in the ACC Legends Class, but not in the Ring of Honor alone itself?

Ford, who now lives just outside of Clemson in Pendleton, S.C., began his head coaching career as the youngest head coach (30 years old) in Division I football with a win over Ohio State in the 1978 Gator Bowl. Three years later, he led the Tigers to the 1981 national championship and was named National Coach of the Year. In all, Ford compiled five ACC Football Championships in his 11 seasons as head coach of Clemson. His winning percentage of .760 is the third highest in ACC history and he ranks second only to FSU’s Bobby Bowden in most bowl victories while an ACC coach with six. His 96 victories, while Clemson’s head coach, are fourth-best in ACC history. At one stretch his Clemson teams were ranked among the Associated Press’ rankings for 41 consecutive weeks and his Tiger teams earned 18 wins over nationally-ranked opponents.

Make it happen Dabo.

Its pretty obvious our current one is a dumbass, so lets get one who will inspire fear to all those entering the state, lets vote for Danny Ford.

Its about time we had another beer-chugging, chaw-spewing Governor. I dont care if he's a republican or a democrat, I know he's not stupid.

He even looks the part when he wants to...


News and links...
Strelow ranks the ACC QBs and its hard to really argue with most of it after the first 2, just based on performance last year. I'd move Ponder up to 4 or 5 though, and I suspect he's going to have a season on par with Danny Kannell's in Tallahassee after another year of Jimbo Fisher's tutelage. Its possible that T. Lewis will do much better for Puke, but they still dont have enough weapons to get past a low-tier bowl game.

Will Korn spoke with Heather Dinich about his hiring of QB coach Jerry Rhome to improve his throwing motion this offseason. Apparently Rhome thinks he has improved:

"With NCAA rules, I couldn't work with coach Napier or any of my coaches at Clemson, so I just wanted to get an extra set of eyes on me, someone who could coach me and help me out," Korn said.

"We really didn't have to spend a whole lot of time correcting stuff when I went down there because I worked so hard on it with my dad and my dad would tape me throw so I could go back to the house and watch it and see what I need to correct," Korn said. "It improved a ton before I even got down there to work with coach Rhome. He was excited to see my release had gotten quicker and shorter and it wasn't so long and I was getting the ball out of my hands pretty quickly. It just gave me a lot of confidence for a guy with his experience and his knowledge of the game to look at me and say, 'You're throwing fine, your mechanics look good,' two weeks after the spring game. It gave me a lot of confidence."

Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports gives his ACC Preseason predictions, picking Clemson 4th, behind NC State, FSU and Wake. He picks VT to win the Coastal.

Athlon has a piece on the GT triple option to complement our last post here. As does SmartFootball. The New York Times previews Wake Forest's upcoming season here.

Remember the SC coaches saying they could inflate a guy's Rivals star rating? Well it looks like Miami was recruiting solely based on that. UNC managed to yet again clear enough scholarships to fit their bloated signing class.

Another article on what the Fridge has gone through lately, and just being a larger-than-life character in Aiken and in the minds of Clemson fans.

Motivated by an argument with a stupid coot friend, I decided to do some digging into one of the scandals of the '80s that is less mentioned now. The 1980s were to college football what the 1960s were to just about everything else in America. Nearly everyone was on probation or getting investigated. There are always things that go wrong in every football program, and we were no exception. Practically no one was innocent, and though almost everyone was using steroids in the '80s too (remember the huge Congress investigation around 1990), we were one unfortunate enough to have someone die from it. We were clearly guilty of passing out drugs to athletes in all sports, as the coaches named below were not confined to football or track & field, that was just their specialty. (There is no mention of any claim against Coach Ford in any published article)

Fear not, because the University of Steriods and Cocaine did much worse, that post is yet to come. For now I'm only linking the wikipedia page.

On October 19, 1984, a 23 year old track star, Stijn Jaspers, was found dead in his dormroom. While steroids were not named as the cause of death in his autopsy report, they were found in his system. SLED decided to pursue that clue, and uncovered a big mess at Clemson, which was already stuck under NCAA probation at the time. These two stories by SI dated in January 1985 and by the New York Times tell all about it.

Clemson strength coach Sam Colson (former conference champ in track & field) apparently got the drugs from Vandy strength coach Doc Kreis who had used steroids there with the help of a local pharmacist. Kreis was a former Clemson football player himself, who played for Red Parker and Hootie Ingram. Doc Kreis is now widely known as one of the best Strength coaches in college football.

The outcome was that 3 coaches were indicted: Colson, Narewski, and Harkness and ultimately pled guilty.

In March of 1985 (date of that week's article), both Clemson President Bill Atchley and longtime A.D. Bill McLellan were forced to resign their jobs, which was requested by McLellan earlier.

A stormy seven-hour emergency meeting of the Clemson board of trustees ended last week with two announcements: Bill L. Atchley, the university's president since 1979, would resign effective July 1, and Bill McLellan, the athletic director since 1971, would be granted his request for reassignment to a new position. What had prompted these startling developments? By all accounts, Atchley had sought to remove McLellan as head of the university's scandal-ridden athletic department, and some of the 13 trustees didn't like it. As things turned out, McLellan did lose his A.D. job. But the fact that he will be staying at the university in another capacity while Atchley leaves—"to unify the Clemson board of trustees," is how Atchley revealingly put it—was a singular defeat for the idea that university presidents should have the ultimate authority over their schools' athletic departments.

Knowing what happened 4 years later, that last statement is kinda funny.

Although it should be pointed out that the steriods and NCAA scandals were not the only things going wrong in the program, though this one is more of a personal nature than an indictment of the program itself, since it happens everywhere.

After this, an even worse decision was made in promoting the former golf coach, Bobby Robinson to A.D. We were stuck with him til 2002, when he "retired" and was then hired by GT. Bill McLellan ended up at Southern Miss eventually.

And then, finally, the man totally responsible for Ford's dismissal was hired in October.

Lennon was forced out by the BOT in spring of 1994.