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HASKELL, Ark. -- After a successful run as head coach of The Citadel from 1966-72, coach Jimmy "Red" Parker was ushered in as Clemson's new head football coach on December 5, 1972. Parker had already been in the coaching profession for 20 years before taking the post, and had never served as anything other than a head coach.
Though Parker is largely credited with building and recruiting a foundation that would ultimately set the stage for Clemson's longest stint ever in the national spotlight from 1977-91, the 1974 ACC Coach of the Year is somewhat of an overlooked figure from the modern era in Clemson lore.
That is until now, following the coach's candid, exclusive interview with Tigerillustrated.com where he revealed a story gone bad due to a climate of distrust, backstabbing and scheming which led to his firing on the day of December 1, 1976.
I met with Parker on the morning of May 11, 2011, where for several hours he placed himself back in Upstate South Carolina one more time to revisit his tenure as the Tigers' head coach.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: When I first began covering Clemson in 1993, I remember writing down a list of 10 figures in Clemson football history I wanted to interview. No. 1 on the list was former head football coach Red Parker.
Of all the figures in Clemson history, certainly in the modern era, I felt Parker was the most overlooked. I felt there was a lot still left untold and unspoken with regard to his time here, specifically his tumultuous final season and subsequent departure.
I can honestly say of all the projects and interviews I've had the pleasure to work on throughout my career, this was by far my favorite. I remember leaving Mr. Parker's office five years ago following this interview and before I could get out of the town of Haskell, Ark., I phoned Tigerillustrated.com senior writer Larry Williams. I said to Larry, "I just got done with the best interview of my career. Red Parker was incredible."
And it wasn't close.
In my entire life, I've never known any individual with the sheer recall and memory bank Red Parker possessed. It's as though he never left Clemson, South Carolina. To see this 79-year old man - without hesitation - reel off names, dates, conversations, direct quotes (which I later corroborated in my research) from the mid 1970's was nothing short of remarkable. It spoke to not only Mr. Parker's aptitude and recall, but also indicated to me this was a man still hurting and not yet at peace with the way his head coaching career had come to a close in Clemson, South Carolina.
Two days prior, I had just left Tommy Bowden's home in Panama City Beach (Fla.). I had put in roughly 25 hours of research into the Parker interview back in Clemson. I had never spent more time on a single project for Tigerillustrated.com. I remember going over my notes on the 11-hour drive from Florida to Arkansas and several things began to concern me about this interview.
I knew that Parker had always felt former Clemson head coach Charley Pell took his job. I knew that he was still carrying that with him. Pell wasn't around to defend himself, but Parker could certainly give me his perspective and possibly a blow-by-blow account of precisely what transpired in 1976. The question was whether he would be willing to go on the record with it. And was he ever!
Each former Clemson head coach I interviewed wanted to go off the record at times during the interview process. Parker wanted me to cut the recorder off on three occasions, one of which was to give a very candid, unfavorable opinion of a former Clemson figure, though he expressly told me he preferred I not release it in the interview because a family member of this individual was still alive, a family member he respected. He told me I was free to release his appraisal of this Clemson figure only if the relative were to pass away. That has not happened as of this writing, so we will continue to comply, of course.
In addition, I knew Parker had some health issues. At the time of this interview (well before his death in January of 2016), he was 79 years old. In fact when I phoned him from my hotel room in Mississippi the night before, he said, "There's something wrong with me and I'm not sure what it is. The doctors aren't even sure. I've not been feeling well but I'm looking forward to seeing you, son. I just hope I don't let you down."
When I walked into his office the following morning, I told him I had become a Red Parker expert and I knew many things about his past. I told him I'd recite a lot of it in my questioning in an effort to jog his memory. He just smiled and pointed to the crown of his head, saying, "I don't need those notes. It's all up here. It never left."
He couldn't have been more right!
Mr. Parker was meeting with a couple of high school players. He quickly ushered both out, telling them, "This guy from Clemson, South Carolina has come all this way to see me. I've got to spend a few hours with him."
He then gently took off his hat, sat back in a chair and asked, "Son, are you ready?"
I said, "Yes sir, I am. We've got a lot to talk about."
And he replied, "Yes we do. I'm ready for you, son. Let's do it."
This is Red Parker, in his own words.
This is his story.
PART III
Ard. Now in the spring of 1976, what would go on to be your last in Clemson, there wasn't a specific message you were getting privately from Bill McLellan? Were there any additional objectives for you or the program outlined by him at this stage?
Parker. "There wasn't a message like that at the start of 1976, no. But once I got into the season, about two months before my last day, I began to hear that he (McLellan) and one of my coaches (Charley Pell) were playing handball everyday. And I didn't like the feeling of that."
Ard. Coach, we've been building to this point, so it is now time to talk about it. You make a key off-season staff change before the 1976 season. You bring in an assistant coach from Virginia Tech to run your defense - Charley Pell. Before you hired him, what had been your relationship with him?
Parker. "I hardly knew him. When I called coach Bear Bryant, who was always there for me, and asked him about some candidates, we discussed some names. I asked him to give me his take on a few guys. We got down to Rex Norris at Oklahoma. He said he thought Rex would be a good hire. I called Rex and he said he'd be interested. I tentatively offered him the job, but the next day he called and had talked to Barry Switzer. He said Switzer had told him he'd get the defensive coordinator job when their current one left, so he stayed.
"When that happened, I went to the second man coach Bryant had talked about and that was Pell. Coach Bryant told me, 'He's a pretty good coach, and he's a fair recruiter, but I do want you to know that he's slicker than [expletive].'
"Well, I had sense enough to know what he meant. So, I thought I'd call Jimmy Sharpe up at Virginia Tech. I asked Jimmy about permission to talk to Pell for my defensive coordinator spot. Well, let me just say that he didn't have any problems at all with me hiring Pell.
"So ... who's the fool there? Who's the fool for doing the hiring? You have that in front of you, so who's the fool? I'm the fool. But, here's where my own arrogance got in the way. I thought I had McLellan and the president backing me. I thought that I had the majority of the people behind me.
"They wanted me to make some staff changes and I needed to. I thought I could handle this. And it was just my arrogance."
Ard. When you get him on campus, you visit with him, you talk with him and get heavy into the interview process, what were some things about Pell that initially struck you?
Parker. "I think he had a good defensive mind. I thought he was somewhat arrogant in some of his beliefs in that if it wasn't the way he believed, it was wrong. And you don't coach that way. That was the biggest issue I had. He believed in the same things defensively, pursuit and tackling, zone concepts, the same things that I did. I wasn't worried about the hire at that particular time."
Ard. You have a down year, but you close the book on '75 and you go to work in recruiting. Here are some of the notables from what was another stellar recruiting class: Lester Brown, Jim Stuckey, Billy Lott, Bubba Brown, Rex Varn and Marvin Sims.
Parker. "We knew they were going to be good players. We were a little bit surprised that we were able to recruit some of those kids considering we had come off a bad year. We played Florida State in what was the worst performance I've ever seen in my life and FSU wasn't very good. We beat a lot better football team in Tallahassee the next year. Fortunately, we were able to still get some good players. Our crowds kept on coming back even when we played badly. In my way of thinking, I kept saying, 'They're with us if we can do it back right like it should be.' So I was determined in 1976 to set the ship right, but do it with young guys, even though I knew we'd take our lumps early in the year."
Ard. I want to read some quotes from you coming out of the spring of 1976. You said, 'We had our best off-season we've had since we've been here. The schedule is extremely demanding. After our Georgia game, we'll go on the road five times in six weeks.' You knew you could face another difficult season, and you had already decided to go with underclassmen in the fall. How did you feel about your team and the outlook for the season coming out of the spring?
Parker. "I knew we did not have the experience that we were going to need. The experience factor was not on our side. We'd have to play a lot of young guys, having just five seniors. We knew that some of those young guys wouldn't be ready for early-season action. But my thought was if we could keep our heads in the game and our minds right early in the season, we'd be competitive in the last half of the season. As it turned out, in the last four games, we beat Florida State and South Carolina. We had a great defensive game up at Maryland, but we couldn't move the ball."
Ard. You get out of the gate that season with a 10-7 win over the Citadel. You don't get your next win until October 30 when you beat FSU 15-12. You finish 0-4-1 in the ACC, 3-6-2 overall. In addition to the two ties, you lose three close games - 21-19 at Tennessee, 20-14 at Wake Forest and 27-23 versus UNC. You told me off-line awhile ago your team performed about like you had expected it to (in the preseason), but it had to be frustrating nonetheless, because on paper it looked like you deserved a better fate than 3-6-2.
Parker. "It was frustrating, no question about it. But I tried to keep our heads focused on the fact that the games that we weren't good enough to pull off at the end, we would be ready to win those games in the future because we knew we had talent and it was developing. When we blew out South Carolina, 28-9, we felt like we were ending on a good note and nearing a point where we needed to be (going into 1977)."
Ard. You come off a 20-0 loss to No. 6 Maryland on the road, the team you said that spring you felt would be the best in the ACC. You end up actually scrimmaging your team before the South Carolina game. Let me ask you about that. Why did you - even informally - scrimmage your team before the game that day?
Parker. "That's not the way it was, actually. When I was at the Citadel, I always feared Clemson running down The Hill and intimidating my kids on the team. I thought at the end there, 'Let's change this routine a bit.' We had our buses parked down at the dressing room where we unloaded. We went out for pre-game warmups over at the soccer field, which was west of the stadium. We went over there to warm up. I was just kidding when I said then that we scrimmaged. We didn't really scrimmage. But we did have more engagement because no one was out there to see us. South Carolina's team was in the stadium warming up and they were wondering where in the heck we were. Well, we didn't even come into the stadium that day for the first time until about a minute before kickoff when we ran down The Hill."
Ard. You got into this earlier, so now we can talk about it. At what point this season did you and McLellan talk about his evaluation of you and the program?
Parker. "He talked to me one time and said, 'Kind of think about the staff changes you're going to have.' I said, 'OK.' Then on Monday or Tuesday before the Maryland game, the president (Dr. R.C. Edwards) called me into his office. He didn't say anything whatsoever about any kind of changes. And I knew I wanted to make a few changes, but I wasn't going to fire them. I was going to let them get jobs first and then backfill. I wasn't going to throw anybody under the bus to save my own butt. And I feel that way now.
"I will never forget the words Dr. Edwards said to me that day. He said, 'I cannot begin to tell you how much I admire what it has taken for you to play all these freshmen and sophomores.' And he had tears running down his face. It was real. This man loved Clemson. He said, 'I don't know how you do it.' I told him I didn't have any choice. I told him I did what I felt we had to do.
"He then advised me that there were two guys on the Board of Trustees that were after me. And I knew who they were. And I knew who they were friends with (on my staff). He said, 'But I'll tell you this much, I've got your back. Don't you worry about it.'
"But I don't know that I was reassured."
Ard. These two members of the Board of Trustees - who I know you will not name - why do you think they were after you?
Parker. "I don't think it. I know it."
Ard. Why were there two members of the Board of Trustees who were against you?
Parker. "Well, they were close buddies with a certain person (Pell)."
Ard. You mentioned awhile ago that one of your assistant coaches had been playing handball with McLellan. For the record, you were referring to Pell, weren't you?
Parker. (Pausing) "It looked a lot like him."
Ard. December 1, 1976 arrives. It is announced at a press conference that you are no longer the head coach. Oddly, at that same press conference, Pell is named head coach. Were you at that press conference?
Parker. (Nodding; No.)
Ard. When did you know that you were out? Tell me how that happened.
Parker. (Pausing) "Cris, this exposes the whole thing, but I will tell you. This is the whole deal, as God as my witness ...
Tigerillustrated.com will release part IV of The Red Parker Files on Monday, July 4.
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