One-on-one with Thad Turnipseed - Part 2
THE WEST ZONE message board | SHOP NOW: DEALS on CLEMSON apparel
****** By request, Tigerillustrated.com is re-releasing our LENGTHY, one-on-one interview with Clemson's Thad Turnipseed, originally released in August of 2016.
We would also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CLEMSON –- Thad Turnipseed has built Clemson’s recruiting room into a monster from scratch, yet he hadn’t previously spent his professional life learning the art of recruiting.
He played a major role in turning the Tigers’ communications apparatus from an afterthought into a model for the rest of the country, yet he’ll tell you himself he couldn’t produce a graphic or a video to save his life.
Why Dabo Swinney is a great recruiter | More from on-campus bowl practices | How Clemson will now manage its LOADED stable of quarterbacks | Our interview with Travis Etienne's parents | Clemson's Ten Most Wanted Prospects between now and Signing Day, February 7 | Clemson's Ten Most Wanted Prospects between now and Signing Day, Feburary 7 -- Part II | One-on-one with Thad Turnipseed | All in the family
He spent 20 years building things, but none of them as cutting-edge and visionary and all-encompassing as the sprawling, breathtaking operations facility that will be the first of its kind when it opens in January.
Turnipseed is an idea man who loves to build things – physical things and concepts. He says the source of those ideas is … daydreaming.
“I’m a professional daydreamer,” Turnipseed said with a smile.
A wandering mind is typically not regarded as a good thing, but in the last two decades one of the biggest discoveries of neuroscience revealed the creative benefits of daydreaming.
In the 2014 book The Organized Mind, Daniel Levitin writes: “This distinctive and special brain state is marked by the flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, and a relative lack of barriers between senses and concepts. It also can lead to great creativity and solutions to problems that seemed unsolvable.”
To learn more about a person and a mind that has been so critical to Clemson’s rise since Dabo Swinney hired him from Alabama in 2013, Tigerillustrated.com sat down with Turnipseed this week for an extended period.
Here, in Turnipseed’s own words, are more reflections from the mind of Clemson’s daydream believer:
About three years before I came here, I interviewed for high-level positions at LSU and Wisconsin in their athletics departments. I always knew I wanted to be an athletics director. That was always my goal. But what I’ve learned from Dabo being here is what he says all the time: Bloom where you’re planted. He says that weekly to us around here. Because it’s human nature to always want to be at the next step. But I guess you change with age. For 10 years, I was worried about the next job. Even though I was at Alabama, I’m thinking, “When can I be the AD somewhere? How long is it going to be?”
When Dabo was trying to hire me, he told me, “Thad, you’ve done everything you can do.” I was Director of Event Management, Director of Capital Projects, Director of Major Gifts, Associate AD for Special Projects, Director of External Operations for Football. I had done everything, but I was never on a sports staff. And that’s what brought the sales pitch from Dabo: You’ve done everything, and for you to grow you need to come here and get a totally different perspective.
And that’s brought a funny realization: Now, my goal is to be the best football guy in the country. Because while I chased that AD job for 10 or 12 years, there’s none out there that I’m chasing or looking for now. I’m happy and blooming where I’m planted. And a lot of that goes back to working for a guy I love.
Great leaders have three things in common: They’re highly intelligent (and Dabo is as intelligent as anyone I’ve ever been around; he could have been a brain surgeon); they’re respected; and they’re feared. Most of us relate fear to being fired, getting cussed out, getting yelled at. And unfortunately, that’s the way I was before because of my old construction side. I’ve changed from the three years I’ve been here. With Dabo, you fear him because you love him so much. He creates fear out of love. And that is a totally different way of creating fear out of what we all relate fear to. So because of that management style, and knowing he gives you a different sense that you don’t have to be out there patting your shoulder and saying “I’m the guy,” all of us – I’m just a microcosm of the whole department.
You see a lot of staffs out there where the coordinators want all the glory. We don’t care who gets the credit. We just want to love one another and serve one another, and it’s that simple. It works. We love, care and serve the player and each other, and it all works out. And that is the uniqueness of this department – every facet of it. Recruiting, operations, weight room, training room. We love, care and serve. And that comes from the head coach saying that’s how it’s going to be. And that allows you to manage totally differently when you have that comfort level.
Dabo has so much conviction for what he believes. I think part of the reason he’s successful is he’s hard to convince otherwise when he believes in something. I don’t want to make it sound like he doesn’t listen, because he does. But you’ve got to do a lot of convincing for Dabo to change his mind. And I think that’s a great thing because people in that leadership position can’t please everybody. They’ve got to believe what they believe.
From the accounts at Georgia, it seems that Kirby Smart is taking just about everything Alabama did when he was there and implementing it with his new job as head coach of the Bulldogs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that approach, but I think there’s a contrast between that and what is going on here. I took some thoughts and principles of what we were doing at Alabama when I came here, but we’re all Clemson. The concepts are the same with the overall recruiting structure, but even within that recruiting structure it’s totally different.
All the other schools under the Nick Saban tree that have used the recruiting War Room concept that they started, they all have the same type board and they’re going to have 25 or 40 names at each position. Where we’re different is we focus on the quality of the individual and not the quantity of names. Fewer people get more attention, more letter-writing, graphics, direct messages, more touching. And the difference is this: Dabo Swinney demands a social-media report – he calls it Google Central – that tells us everything about these players. It’s hard for a coach, any coach, to resist the urge for that Johnny 5-Star. Well Dabo will take that 3-star guy in a heartbeat if he’s ready to commit and he meets all the criteria and he’s a good person with no buyer’s remorse.
Do the study: Those good 3-star and 4-star guys end up just as good as those 5-star guys if you keep them in the program. Part of our culture is we don’t kick people off. We don’t medical them or encourage them to go anywhere. If you go to school and you don’t get in trouble and you represent Clemson the right way, you’ve got a scholarship here for four years with no ifs ands or buts about it. Whereas at other schools, if you’re not going to play there’s always six or seven every signing class that they find places to go. So then all of a sudden you have guys who haven’t even played like Kevin Dodd who are first- or second-rounders who have played one year. Those guys mature most of the time, and in those cases you have a lot of good years without trouble and without problem kids. We’re getting better and better at that.
So even though the structure of the recruiting room is there, it’s totally Dabo’s feel. Because that board is dictated first by the nine coaches, but the recruiting machine people – Jordan Sorrells and myself – have the ability to tell Dabo: “This guy is not a Clemson fit.” If we mark red on questionable character, instantly Dabo goes to that assistant coach and finds out what’s going on. And if we’re not comfortable with it, or we can’t correct that kid’s questionable content, we don’t recruit him.
Before I go to bed every night, I go through Tigerillustrated.com. That’s my job, to go through the message boards. Sometimes I’ll see comments from fans asking why we aren’t recruiting certain people. Well if we aren’t recruiting someone, there’s a reason. That’s the head coach having the confidence in the program and bringing good people in and developing young people and serving their hearts and caring for them. And then all of a sudden you look up three years later and the guy people have forgotten about becomes a second-round draft pick. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But nobody does it. Because everybody thinks you have to have the 5-star guy. They’ve just got to take somebody no matter what.
The red flags we look for with the recruits are who they follow on social media, who follows them and what they follow. Pornography. Bad language. And it’s not just what they say on social media; it’s also here on their visits. Do they open the door for a lady? How do they talk to their mom? Do they pray before they eat? How are they acting when they’re here? Some people are just shy, so sometimes you get a bad rap just from being shy. But what I look for is how they are treating their family or who they came with. Are they respectful? Yes ma’am, no ma’am. Look you in the eye. Little things. Just like if they were dating your daughter, things you would look for. And we document it. We have enough good people in place to document it, and Dabo values that information. That’s how we recruit.
Recruiting graphics are everywhere now, and of course we do an outstanding job of it. The pioneer of all this was Milton Overton, who is now the athletics director at Florida A&M. Milton came from Texas A&M to Alabama and made a huge impact with their communications. He’s a rock star in the business. He’s the one who created the whole social media graphic department at Alabama, what is now the #BuiltByBama brand. I spent a lot of time with him, and we were good friends. I watched him do all that. Nick Saban demanded that Alabama create something in that department, and they hired Milton to create it. And he took it to the next level. I saw how he did it and brought some of that here. The difference is, Milton had staff and all I had was one kid out of Sports Information named Schuyler Easterling (he did a fantastic job and is now working for the Orange Bowl). He and I were the ones who started the whole thing. I didn’t know anything about Twitter at the time, or Facebook. I had nothing. But I knew we needed it. And I knew if you don’t have social media today you’re going to be left in the dust.
We were way behind. But even as unorganized and student-driven as it was back then, we went from nothing to the middle of the pack. And Clemson fans were ecstatic with even that. So then we brought in Jonathan Gantt, and we had to bring everybody together and settle how we would convey Dabo’s culture through our communications. I give credit to our communications director, Joe Galbraith, because at the time I thought anything was better than nothing. Joe thought if it wasn’t a certain quality it shouldn’t be put out. I told him I didn’t have time to wait to be great at it; I need it now. I need it to be out. So that was the driver of Jonathan getting hired, and then Nik Conklin getting hired. And then all of a sudden the level of quality is getting better. For the last year they’ve had a complete run of it, and that’s when it’s really taken off. They understand Dabo’s parameters, what we can put and what we can’t. We meet once a week to take a look at what we did, identify what was good and maybe what wasn’t so good. But that’s when we truly blew up in social media.
At Alabama, Milton had a room with probably 15 cubicles that were filled with graphic design and video kids from the university. So when I came here, I needed some kids who knew how to do that stuff. And I was told by a lot of people: We don’t have those kids here; we don’t have those departments here. So we printed out 8 x 10 letters and went and put them on cork boards on campus: “If you want to work for football and have graphic or video experience, come see us.” And we had 20 kids come see us in a week. Some were really good and some were really bad, but eventually we got it right. And now, we always have six to 10 kids here that are really good graphic kids. A lot of them now are getting jobs. One video kid that we hired is the head guy at Rutgers. One is with the Atlanta Falcons. One is at N.C. State. They’re head people. And they all came from being students right here. So we had plenty of talented kids at Clemson, but people didn’t know it. It might not be their major, but they’re still creative. And that’s how it got going.
Dabo is not on Twitter, and Nick Saban knows nothing about this stuff either. But Nick had the mindset that he had to be the best and he was going to do whatever it took. What I brought to Clemson, I think, was that mindset of do whatever it takes to be the best. I used to always say, “Why are we waiting to be great?” Just because when you’re not doing it, you see the importance of it. Nick probably has a higher sense of urgency than anyone. If he wants it, he wants it now and you don’t really debate about it. He is respectful to authority in his own way, but he’s going to get what he wants. Dabo is very respectful to that chain of command, so it might take a little longer.
And we get what we need here, don’t misunderstand. We get what we need to be successful here. It just might take a little bit longer. And I prefer the Dabo way. That’s the correct way. You’ll never go wrong being respectful of the chain of command and doing it the right way. Dabo is of the same mindset as Nick in terms of being the best at whatever you do: We’ve got to be the best at everything. You can’t just kind of halfway do nutrition. You can’t halfway do recruiting. When he was first starting out, Dabo was saying, “Just give me something.” Now as he’s growing and proving himself, he can be more demanding. Now we’re just getting better at everything we do – everything we do.
Once you are at the cutting edge, you have to stay there and that is exactly what my role has become at Clemson. People get content and prideful. That was my big speech this week at our recruiting meeting: As great as we are, all these awards we’re getting and the No. 1 ranking in all of this stuff, we can sit here and be prideful. And pride is the fall of a lot of great countries and a lot of great men and women. That was my challenge: Don’t ever think what we are doing is the best. Because somebody else is always trying to think of something better. Because Jordan Sorrells and Jonathan Gantt and all these other people are doing the day-to-day work, I can sit here and daydream. I can be that policeman who’s never satisfied. When I’m satisfied and I think we’re doing really well is when I get the most scared. That scares me more than anything is when I think we’re doing great. Because then we’re not getting better. And that’s probably what I’m pretty good at. If you ask people about me, they’ll tell you that it’s almost to a fault. I’ve almost got to make myself sit back and enjoy it sometimes, give more atta boys.
But it’s hard to satisfy me, because when we are good I get scared that we’re stagnant. And when you challenge people, they respond. As great as Jonathan Gantt is, when I challenge him he’s like a bulldog. He comes back the next day or the next week and has better ideas. Jordan is the same way. When you’re good and you get in that routine, it’s hard to do something different. And that’s where I step in.
I’m from the old school, and so is Brent Venables. We recently had a conversation that Dabo has made us both better people. I grew up in a Christian family, grew up in a church all my life, I profess to be a Christian, profess to be a good person. But I would snap at people in a heartbeat and not really realize it. Dabo would say, “Look. Praise in public, criticize in private.” So that’s been something I’ve personally tried to work better at.
I’m a typical construction guy, because I was in construction all my life. That’s a different world, where you yell at each other and go at it, but then you go out and eat dinner with each other and you’re fine. But that’s not really the setting I’m in right now. Dabo, though, will tell you that he hired me to be a bull in a china shop. That’s what he needed at that time. But now I don’t have to be that way, because we are a team with this athletics department and football department. If we need it and it makes sense and it’s not wasteful and we can justify why we need it, they will figure out a way to make it happen.
I’m more old-school when it comes to recruiting. When you’re trying to come up with ways to get better, you always leave off the high school coach and the parents. But nine times out of 10, those are the people with the influence. That’s another thing I’m always hounding the staff about: Do we have the parents’ birthdays? Do we have the coach’s birthday? So many times it’s easiest for these younger people to just stay with the kid. But most of the time, if you get mama you’ve got the player.
We haven’t really invented anything with what we’ve done here. We just took the structure and made it the best it can be. People already did graphics and video. But we do the touch better than anybody. I think our machine is better than anybody’s machine out there. First of all, we don’t try to recruit everybody in the world. These other schools are trying to recruit 40 people at each position, and you can’t give them attention. It’s just impossible. So now under Dabo’s theory, we’re going to be more selective and they’re all good kids.
With our 2017 class, we’ve probably been on 75 people the whole time. And now as people have committed, we’re only down to four or five spots and they’re getting a ton of attention. We’re touching those people better than anybody in the country is touching them. And we’re preparing our 2017 class for Sept. 1, when we can start contacting those guys. And we don’t have 400 like the other schools have. We’ve got probably 100. And we’ll recruit those first 100 out of the 2017 class better than anybody. That means our coaches have to evaluate them better, we’ve got to make sure they are good kids who can get in school and can be the Clemson fit. That’s what we’re making sure of, so we’re not wasting their time and they’re not wasting ours. That’s not really innovative; it’s just we’re doing a better job of what other people are doing. Everybody was doing social media; we’re just doing it a little better. Everybody was doing mailings; we’re just doing it a little better. Everybody was having visitors come in, but at Clemson good people like it. It sells itself. It’s the whole small-town feel, the realness – it’s not hard when you get them here.
I knew it was different here when I got here, but it probably took me a full year to realize that this is a perfect storm taking place at Clemson. That’s what I tell people in our All-In Meetings: It doesn’t get any better than this. You won’t find a better place or a better person to work for than where you are right now. And if you don’t believe that, you need to get out of here. Because I’ve owned a company, I’ve worked for a company, I’ve worked for the mecca if you want to call Alabama the standard. That’s not a slap at Alabama. They’re great. But it’s not Clemson. This is as good as it gets for good people. Period.
I shared an office at Alabama for two years when Dabo was pursuing his MBA. I always knew he was special. I knew he was highly intelligent. Great work ethic. He always was a magnet on the team. Everybody on the team was always attracted to Dabo. He was always the guy everybody wanted to come sit with at the table. He’s always been that genuine, nice person. My worry with Dabo – and I told him – was that he was too nice to be a head coach. I was used to that old-school approach where you had to be feared by being a butt. And Dabo has proved me wrong. Everybody fears Dabo just as much as the people fear Nick Saban. But it’s just totally different. You fear him because you don’t want to disappoint him. Now does he slam his hand on the table and get upset? Yeah, he still does that. He’s normal. But that’s not what scares you about Dabo. You fear Dabo because you don’t want to let him down. He’s so good to you, and you know you can’t get a better job. You don’t want to lose your job because you know how good you’ve got it here.
He’s the perfect fit for Clemson. When I was here that first day three years ago, he told me I didn’t know how great this place could be and that I had to leave Alabama to grow. You know, all the Alabama people just assume Dabo is going to come back to Alabama. But Dabo said that day: “If I stayed at Clemson forever, I’d be happy.”
And now I get it. I totally get it now. If I stayed at Clemson forever, I’d be totally happy.
NEW USERS GET IN ON THE 50% OFF SPECIAL HERE
Code: Holiday50
Offer: 50% off FIRST YEAR of annual sub.
Offer valid through 12.25.17 (ENDS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT EST)
New user? Sign-up for the Holiday50 Promotion here
Returning free users, and past subscribers also can get the discount HERE