CLEMSON -- Change was in the air on the late-November 2014 morning after Clemson finally vanquished South Carolina, a decisive victory that left Dabo Swinney in tears as he walked off the field knowing the era of losing to Steve Spurrier was finally done.
It wasn't just the change in the tenor of a bitter rivalry, though.
Chad Morris, the hot-shot offensive coordinator who had flirted with numerous jobs over his four seasons at Clemson, informed Swinney he was heading to Dallas to take over SMU.
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Most folks figured Swinney would go out and find another big-brand name to take over, using the $1.3 million he was paying Morris to find someone who'd been through the wars.
Two of those folks using conventional logic were Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott. Neither had any idea Swinney, later that Sunday, was going to call each one into his office separately and break the news that he was promoting them to co-offensive coordinators.
Four years earlier, amid the tumult that followed a 6-7 season, Swinney shocked Elliott by telling him it was time to come back to his alma mater.
To coach ... running backs?
Elliott played receiver in college and had coached receivers over his two seasons at South Carolina State and three seasons at Furman. He was prepared to tell Swinney he should go in another direction to fill Andre Powell's spot because he wanted Swinney to be successful (Swinney was 19-15 overall and 13-9 in the ACC at the time).
Swinney talked him into coming on that January of 2011 day at Swinney's house in Country Walk in Clemson.
It wasn't unlike 2008 when Swinney, promoted to interim coach after Tommy Bowden's departure, told Scott he was going to be the receivers coach. Scott had just joined Bowden's staff that previous offseason as a defensive graduate assistant under Vic Koenning.
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And then on that Sunday after the 2014 squashing of the Gamecocks, Swinney surprised Elliott and Scott again.
The two were stretching partners when they played at Clemson.
And yesterday, Elliott and Scott might as well have been in different galaxies.
The former was sitting in front of a microphone at a press conference as he prepared to lead his Virginia team into Death Valley to face his mentor and father figure.
The latter had played a round of golf in the morning in the Upstate and was on the road to Allendale for a hunting trip when he spent 45 minutes reminiscing on a phone call with Tigerillustrated.com.
Elliott is in his third season in the pressure-cooker existence of being a head coach, an uphill climb in Charlottesville where his 4-1 Cavaliers were greeted with wide swaths of aluminum four days ago for a big home game against Louisville.
Scott kissed that existence goodbye in 2022 after two-plus seasons leading South Florida (record: 4-26). He's living his best life in Clemson as a dad, husband and real-estate agent (necessarily in that order).
Swinney's legacy at Clemson and within college football is forever secure. He's a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, and it still seems almost unbelievable that he lifted the Tigers program to the point of winning two national titles, playing for two more, and going to the College Football Playoff six straight seasons.
He began his head-coaching tenure in the shadow of Danny Ford's 1980s glory days.
Now Swinney's shadow covers the entire community and not many people talk about how Danny did it anymore.
Even amid those stunning accomplishments, Swinney draws criticism from time to time for various reasons. Some of it seems fair, and a lot of it doesn't.
This is widely identified as a key juncture for Clemson football as Swinney and everyone try to adjust to the new realities of revenue sharing, the transfer portal and conference realignment. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to wonder whether Swinney's model will hold up over the long term, the Tigers' 2024 performance to date is causing some critics to rethink the years-long admonishments of Swinney's system as being hopelessly outdated and out of touch.
Maybe there's something to the culture, the retention, the focus on the relational over the transactional? Too early to make a firm judgment on that, but it's not too early to have faith that Swinney's methods will have staying power here in his 16th full season and well beyond.
The history seems important.
Late 2014 was also regarded as a critical juncture for Swinney's program -- and no, no one on the planet was predicting the long run of orange-drenched prominence that would commence in September of 2015.
Elliott is presently consumed with trying to stay on the field with Clemson on Saturday, so yesterday he didn't have much time to talk about Swinney's surprising decision 10 years ago.
Scott had all the time in the world as he drove down I-26. He recalled that he was going to go with Morris in the years before when Morris talked seriously with other schools including Texas Tech. None of those jobs ever materialized despite a close call or two, and by the end of 2014 Scott had fashioned quite a name for himself as a successful receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.
"Coach Swinney is really not the type to really tell anybody: 'Hey, when this guy leaves I'm going to do this,'" Scott said yesterday. "Obviously he's always planning in his own mind, but he's never been one to forecast that with his staff. So when Chad left I didn't really know what was going to happen."
Swinney called Scott into his office that Sunday and this is what Scott remembers him saying:
All right! This is the big day for you. I'm excited for you. I just had Tony in here and let him know I want to name both of you guys co-offensive coordinators.
Scott remembers having two separate reactions:
One was excitement, of course.
The other: "Wait, what does a co-coordinator do?'"
Scott to his boss: How are we going to break this up?
Swinney: I don't know. You and Tony are smart guys. Y'all can figure that out. Tony is an engineer and you're a math major. You guys are smart enough and y'all can figure it out.
Had that interaction been relayed to fans in real time, it might've caused a message-board meltdown.
It might've come off as Swinney not thinking through the decision carefully enough.
But anyone who knows the guy knows he is nothing if not calculating and careful in his deliberations on not just coaching hires, but every facet of what goes on behind the walls of his football baby.
And the wisdom of his 2014 decision comes forth with this revelation from Scott:
"He told us that if he named me the offensive coordinator that he'd have probably lost Tony sometime in the next couple of years because he was ready to be an OC. And he said if he named Tony the OC then he was worried about losing me to somewhere calling for me to be their OC.
"And by naming us co-OC's, it assured that whenever one of us left to be a head coach that the other could run the offense by himself.
"I thought that was really smart for that situation, and it really showed some foresight on his part. Because I did have calls over the next few years, and I know Tony did as well."
Swinney also brought in Clemson alum Brandon Streeter to coach the quarterbacks, and that was seen as an upgrade because quarterback coaching wasn't considered Morris' strong suit.
Later that same Sunday, hours after Morris informed Swinney of his departure for SMU, Scott walked into Elliott's office and shut the door.
"We both kind of smiled and said: 'All right, I guess we're going to figure this out,'" Scott said.
The shared takeaway from that meeting: If one of us can do a good job as coordinator, then two of us can do a great job.
Elliott and Scott later met with the entire offense, and their message was that Clemson's offense wasn't joining Morris on that plane to Dallas.
Long term, the offense was loaded with talent including superstar quarterback Deshaun Watson.
Short term, Watson was undergoing knee surgery and would not be available for the Russell Athletic Bowl against Oklahoma.
Scott remembers ESPN's analytics giving Clemson almost no shot. Even many Clemson fans didn't think there was much of a chance because Watson's replacement, Cole Stoudt, had ranged from shaky to really bad late in the season against Georgia Tech and Georgia State.
And had Watson not managed to turn into Superman while slicing through the Gamecocks with a torn ACL, maybe that agonizing losing streak extends to six.
The 2012 conquest of LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl is popularly regarded as the turning point under Swinney because it showed Clemson could knock off an SEC bully.
But the 40-6 smashing of Oklahoma in that 2014 bowl game isn't far behind and also holds an exalted place in the story of Clemson's rise from really good to incomprehensibly dominant.
They were off and running with Stoudt that night in Orlando, scoring on the first offensive play when he hit Artavis Scott on a quick horizontal throw that Scott took 65 yards to the end zone.
And they were off and running in 2015 when Watson returned -- the win over Notre Dame in the rain, the ACC Championship, the pizza party, another rout of Oklahoma in the CFP semifinal, and then making Nick Saban pull his hair out in Clemson-Alabama Part 1.
You know all about the orange vapor trail from there. But Scott keeps thinking back to that night in the Russell Athletic Bowl, the opening act of the co-coordinators.
He's still trying to find a picture from late in that game, when matters were decided and the celebration on the sideline brought Swinney, Elliott and Scott together for a wonderful and unforgettable embrace.
"He grabbed me and Tony by the back of our heads right there at the end of the game and pulled us in where we were right there in his face. He was just in there smiling."
Here Scott paused on the other end of the line, getting choked up.
"To me, the confidence that came from that game led to the next five years. We scored on literally the first play. It really gave us so much confidence going into that next season. Because of what we did in that bowl game, the next season did not feel like: 'Oh here we go. It's our first season and how is this going to go?' I mean we were like: 'Yeah, we can do this. Our players know we can do this. Everybody knows we can do this.'
"And it took off."
The co-coordinator experiment coincided with a 70-5 overall record and a 43-2 mark against ACC teams with five consecutive conference titles to go with all the national prominence.
They averaged 39.8 points over those 75 games together.
But it's not numbers alone that Scott is proud of.
Yesterday he shared that he and Elliott never yelled at each other -- not one time over those five years when they faced not only the biggest stages imaginable but the most pressure-packed situations conceivable.
We probably don't even have to type that such a harmonious relationship is not common in a cutthroat, unforgiving business.
"It's amazing to me, even to this day, that Tony and I never had a major blowup argument with each other -- during games, after games, before games, during the week. I mean you would think there'd be at least one time where we had to tell our staff: 'You know what, we're going to break up for an hour or 30 minutes and y'all give us a little time here.'
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"Like, there was none of that. Because Tony and I had so much respect for each other that we wouldn't let it get to that point. And it also helped that we brought different types of knowledge and expertise to that job and it allowed us to give the nod to one person over the other."
Their last night together was Jan. 13, 2020 in the New Orleans Superdome.
Clemson was a great team, but LSU was better that night because it brought perhaps the most unstoppable offense in college football history.
Scott was off to South Florida.
Elliott would coach two more seasons before taking the Virginia job.
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All three of their current situations -- Swinney at Clemson as he tries to get Clemson back to the top of the mountain after a three-year absence; Scott now out of coaching; Elliott trying to gain traction in Charlottesville -- are a testament to the fact that college football journeys are impossible to predict and debilitating in ways that can't be anticipated.
But as Elliott returns to his alma mater Saturday and we consider all the storylines surrounding it, it's wise not to overlook the snapshot of what happened 10 years ago after that glorious triumph over South Carolina.
Morris left.
Swinney had a plan.
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