The Dabo Shadow

CLEMSON -- Nine years ago, this writer handed Dabo Swinney a copy of a recently-published book on the Danny Ford era.

Swinney, at that point 29-19 as Clemson's head coach, was appreciative as he thumbed through the pages. Then, with a smile, he looked up and asked:

"Did he ever lose a game?"

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Swinney might well have been speaking for the four coaches who followed the man who delivered the 1981 national title and a bunch of wins.

ALSO SEE: Danny's Days | Danny's Days II | Danny's Days III | Danny's Days IV | Danny's Days V | Danny's Days VI | Danny's Days VII | Danny's Days VIII | Danny's Days IX | Danny's Days X | Danny's Days XI | Danny's Days XII | Danny's Days XIII | Danny's Days XIV | Danny's Days XV | Danny's Days XVI | Danny's Days: THE END | THE STORY OF UIAGALELEI | THE STORY OF UIAGALELEI - Part 2 | THE STORY OF UIAGALELEI - Part 3 | Clemson's junior commitments

Because this was what it was like as the football program wandered around in the wilderness for two decades, trying to figure out who it was and just how much it wanted to win big.

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Swinney nor anyone else had any problems with Ford the man; he's always kept to himself out on his Pendleton farm since he called it a career in coaching.

Rather, it was his large shadow that was harder to confront and reconcile for coaches who were trying to put it all together, and to do it the right way.

For the last two-plus weeks, Tigerillustrated.com has published the exhaustive chronicling of Ford's tenure -- from the 1978 night inside the Gator Bowl when the Tigers stared down and stood down Woody Hayes and Ohio State, to the 1989 evening inside the same stadium that ended up being Ford's last time walking the Clemson sideline.

It's almost stunning to be reminded that Ford was a mere 41 years old when things got so irreconcilably sideways with his bosses that it ended in a traumatic, scarring divorce.

Swinney is 51 years old and has coached one more full season (12) than Ford (11). That's hard to wrap your mind around.

It's also hard to wrap your mind around the absolute rollercoaster that constituted the so-called glory days of the 1980s.

Look: If you treasure those days and those memories, still hold onto that nostalgia tightly, that's totally fine. No one is telling you not to. You can appreciate that past and this present; the two are not mutually-exclusive concepts.

But a comprehensive accounting of those days reads much differently now than it did back in 2012, when Swinney spent the entire offseason answering for a 70-33 debacle against West Virginia in the Orange Bowl.

That game, by the way, was attended by Ford as he was inducted into the Orange Bowl's Hall of Fame. So even after Swinney delivered Clemson's first 10-win season and ACC title in two decades, Ford's shadow loomed when fans tried to assess just how much Swinney really accomplished in that 2011 season.

"Yeah, good season and all," was a common sentiment after the good (sizzling 8-0 start, ACC championship win over Virginia Tech) was tinged by the embarrassing (humiliations at the hands of the Mountaineers, South Carolina, N.C. State and Paul Johnson), "but he's no Danny."

Almost a decade later, amid an almost unfathomable run of prominence and dominance, the statement has been irrevocably flipped.

Any reasonable inspection of the Ford era, matched against a review of the current era, has to produce the conclusion that Danny was no Dabo.

Throughout the Ford tenure there was a tenuous, teetering nature to the success as Clemson tried to balance a commitment to winning big with following the rules and aspiring to standards of decorum and harmony.

Surely there were some legitimate reasons for Ford and his followers to be mad at an outside world that sometimes seemed to have it out for this new power in the foothills of South Carolina.

Surely there was substance to resisting some ivory-tower academics on campus who'd have seemingly been content with football being reduced to an intramural endeavor.

And surely those times were different everywhere in college athletics, when coaches all over played fast and loose, steroid use was common, and Clemson had good reason to rebel against a basketball-centric conference that slapped Ford's program with an extra year of probation on top of the NCAA's penalties.

Through the eras of Ken Hatfield, Tommy West, Tommy Bowden and the first few years under Swinney, most fans would've taken in a heartbeat a reprise of the good, bad and ugly of the Ford days.

Because when you're losing to Wake Forest, Duke and Boston College, when you are losing five times in a row to South Carolina, and when you and Danny himself are trying to process that 70 on the scoreboard in South Florida, the baggage that came with the glory days doesn't seem so bad.

What's the baggage of the current glory days? What's the most objectively critical thing you can say about Dabo Swinney and what he's constructed?

He has done it the right way in almost every way. This era has been as placid and as consistent as the Ford era was tumultuous and unwieldy. That's not a slap against Ford; that's just the truth.

Perspective can be hard to come by in the immediate aftermath of being bludgeoned by Ohio State in the CFP semifinals, simply because you're not used to seeing that type of thing happen.

But a close reading of how it used to be should provide all the context and perspective necessary in achieving an appropriate level of appreciation for what's going on right now.

Swinney's program has a lot of hard work ahead as it tries to keep pace with Alabama, Ohio State and perhaps others.

Those are the only real shadows Swinney has to deal with.

When he thumbed through the fresh copy of the Ford book nine years ago, Swinney had won 29 games and lost 19.

Since then, he's won 111 of 125 games with two national titles, six straight ACC championships and six consecutive trips to the CFP.

And there's no end in sight.

The only shadow that exists in Clemson is the towering shadow that looms over everything, including Ford's farm in Pendleton.

The Dabo shadow.

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