The Tommy West Files III

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HOOVER, Ala. -- Five days after Ken Hatfield and Clemson announced a separation, Tommy West was named the Tigers' 23rd head football coach on November 29, 1993.

West was a familiar name in Clemson, having served as an assistant coach under Danny Ford from 1982-89. And the fact that he spent much of the 80's as a Ford disciple immediately put him in good graces with the Clemson fan base.

But West inherited an 85-man roster that no longer resembled the top 10 program he had left in January of 1990. Though the longtime Tiger assistant was able to upgrade personnel, an 8-4 ledger in 1995 would be the program's high water mark under his watch. Three years later West would exit following a 3-8 campaign.

In late May of 2011 I sat down with West in Hoover, Ala. for an exclusive, one-on-one interview where the coach stepped back in time once more to place himself in the Clemson head coaching job to recall his five-year run as the program's front man.

West spoke candidly about the ups and downs of his program, keeping the ship afloat during a tumultuous 1996 campaign, recruiting battles, excessive attrition and the final days of his tenure where rumors began to swirl before the end of the 1998 season about an up-and-coming coach from Tulane who would soon end up in Clemson.

PUBLISHER's NOTE: When Tommy West prepared to ring in the New Year in late 1993, hours after receiving his first paycheck as Clemson's new head coach, he wasn't alone. That's because in December of 1993, Clemson's administration had three head football coaches on the payroll, as it was still making payments on contract settlements for Danny Ford and Ken Hatfield.

A decade earlier Clemson's football program had been recognized for pushing the envelope in facilities initiatives, so much so that Auburn had sent directors to Upstate, South Carolina to take a peek at the Tigers' box suites in Death Valley. By the time West took over in November of 1993, the program had fallen badly behind in football infrastructure with no real movement in ten years after Ford had begged the administration, notably foolhardy president Max Lennon, for additional football-related facilities.

By the time West took over as Clemson's head coach, in-state prospects the Tigers were used to landing under Ford were now leaving the Palmetto State with alarming regularity with Florida State, Tennessee and Penn State serving as the primary beneficiaries. Clemson also had been a strong, consistent recruiting presence in both Georgia and North Carolina and that too had abated.

Hatfield would sign just one top 20 recruiting class in four years. Four of West's five recruiting classes would rank inside of the top 20, yet the former Ford disciple would never finish a season ranked inside of the top 25, as massive academic casualties in recruiting, off-the-field problems, aging facilities and a lack of continuity on offense proved too much to overcome.

West would later meet with a young Tommy Bowden weeks after Bowden took over as head coach in 1998. Bowden wanted advice. The first thing West told him; "Stay on these people for facilities because you're way behind."

West's initial staff at Clemson was his best, but the coach backfilled with questionable hires, notably former UNC offensive coordinator Darryl Moody in 1996, a move West acknowledged in this interview was a mistake.

Nevertheless, in late November of 1993, a majority of the Clemson fan base had been quite eager to send Hatfield packing. Ford was not an option for the administration, so West - at the time - represented the perfect compromise, at least on the surface and despite just one year of head coaching experience at UTC-Chattanooga.

West would win his debut as Clemson's head coach in dramatic fashion in Atlanta, weeks later signing the 16th-best recruiting class in the country. Season ticket sales improved and sentiment held that the Tigers were on their way back.

This interview occurred at a hotel in Hoover, Ala. in May of 2011 not long after West had taken a job as the defensive coordinator at UAB. West, who now serves as an assistant coach at Middle Tennessee State under former Clemson assistant coach Rick Stockstill, acknowledges to this day that Clemson fired a better coach than it hired, a contention hard to dispute as Memphis had not gone to a bowl game since 1971 prior to West taking over as head coach in 2001. Before he left, Memphis had competed in five bowls in a six-year span, more than the program had participated in all-time.

This is Tommy West, in his own words.

This is his story.

PART III

Ard. You're off the bowl loss to LSU and you put 1996 to bed. But it is here where you lose Ellis Johnson and you promote Reggie Herring as your defensive coordinator. Did you look out of house at all or were you pretty much locked in on Herring?

West. "I think you always look around but I wasn't going to make the mistake I had made with Rick Stockstill. I looked around, I talked to some other people across the country, but thank goodness I stepped back and I said, 'I've got a guy right here who is as good as anybody.' So I hired Reggie. I'm glad I did."

Ard. And you did not consider bringing Miles Aldridge back?

West. "No."

Ard. You had taken a step back offensively and then there's a decision now to fire Darryl Moody. It was said that he had been out of town and you had tried to reach him, couldn't and left him a voice mail notifying him that he'd been fired. Was that the way it happened?

West. "No. That's a long story, but I decided not to retain him.

"I had always taken a couple of days after the season to evaluate my staff. I had told them this winter that they could take a couple of days before recruiting started and go down to the convention in Orlando, Fla. But I had told Bobby Robinson that I was going to be making a change. I was going to talk to Darryl Saturday morning. They weren't supposed to be on the road until Sunday, but he had already gone. I probably should have waited until he got back from the convention, but I knew I was going to go in that direction and he was down at the convention, so I didn't want him to turn a job offer down if he got one. So I called him and talked to him. I didn't leave him a voice mail."

Ard. You bring in Steve Ensminger who had been the play-caller at UGA and Texas A&M. To my knowledge, I don't recall there being any ties between yourself and Ensminger. How did his hiring come about?

West. "I had gotten involved with Ricky Bustle, a Clemson guy who was at Virginia Tech. I thought he'd do a really good job. I had Ricky right there. He was ready to take the job, but then he couldn't leave Frank (Beamer). I really thought Ricky would have been good. But a guy with really the same type of system was Steve, so I went immediately from Ricky to Steve."

Ard. Despite the problems in your program that were heavily publicized in 1996, you end up signing what will go down as your best, qualifying recruiting class, which was ranked 15th in the nation. A lot of notables here: Woodrow Dantzler, Terry Jolly, Jovon Bush, Alex Ardley, Robert Carswell, Kyle Young, Dextra Polite, Dwight Perkins, Travis Zachery, Antoine Hunter, Kenzi Ross, Neely Page, Javis Austin, T.J. Watkins and Will Merritt.

West. "A lot of good football players, good people, too. And guys that bought in, because we had suffered that black eye. I went through a lot of questions during in-home visits that year, because coaches were killing us in recruiting, calling us a bunch of rogues. That was a really, really good class for us. And we got the quarterback that I thought could take us where we wanted to go. He was the first one, even though Nealon and Brandon Streeter were good; that was special."

Ard. Billy Luckie; I want to talk about him. He was very highly sought after, was headed to Alabama, but you had made up ground with him late and signed him in 1995. He had a lot of natural ability but did not make it. Looking back, why do you think he didn't pan out?

West. "Billy was his own worst enemy, I think. Billy kind of dealt with his own issues. Maybe our system at that time didn't fit him as well. But I thought he fought himself a lot. And then he got into some academic problems. It just didn't work out."

Ard. You go through the spring, it's a good spring for your team, there's a lot of players back, expectations rise markedly and you come into the season ranked 18th in the country. Clemson wins over Appalachian State in the opener, you take a win over a top 25-ranked N.C. State team on the road, then come back and go toe to toe with a top five Florida State team, dropping that one 35-28. Georgia Tech gets you 23-20 in Atlanta the following week. There's the UVA loss at home, then you win three in a row before falling to an 11-1 UNC team 17-10.

The season ends with your team blowing out South Carolina 47-21 in Columbia. Following the win over the Gamecocks, you said at that time that was your best win as a head coach. The bowl game is a tough one because you're up on a 10-win Auburn team 17-6 late, but they come back to win.

It's another seven-win season. You weren't able to get the wins you wanted and year four is now in the books. What do you remember about that season and why your team wasn't more successful?

West. "We won some good games, but we just couldn't quite get that big one. And that's not just that season but through the five years. Now, the league had changed a lot. Now, UNC had gotten really good, UVA had gotten really good. Florida State was top five every year and was in the conference.

"The game that hurt us bad that year was Georgia Tech, the hangover. That killed us. I will say in the off-season, I felt really good going into the season. We put everything we had going into the Florida State game. I wasn't worried about the first two. We were headed for FSU. I told our team and our staff in the off-season, 'This is it. We're going to beat them. We're going to get Florida State this year. We can play with these guys now.' I felt like we had built it to that point, finally. The year before we got there, FSU had beaten Clemson 57-0, so at this point we felt like we could play with them.

"I blame myself for putting too much into the game. Don't ever do that again. Don't ever put that much into a first or second game. Don't let a first or second game define your season. But that's what happened to us."

Ard. You're into 1998 now, what would be your last year. As I remember it, the buyout on your contract was lowered, though you got another year added. What were your feelings about the direction of your program at this point?

West. "Looking back, you know, sometimes you get good draws in bowl games. But we didn't. Drawing Syracuse, LSU and Auburn … we had LSU and Auburn where we could beat them and just didn't get it done. But if you can just win one of them, you end the year on an upbeat. We had been used to doing that in the 80s. But we ended those years (1995-97) on a bad note. Getting a bowl game isn't good enough. You have to win it. Looking back, we scrapped and fought, but we couldn't win that last game. We couldn't win that big game there at the end. Those bowl games hurt us."

Ard. You began your tenure at 5-6, there was improvement to 8-4 in year two before the program slides back to consecutive 7-5 seasons. We're into the spring of 1998 now. At this point, did you still feel you were OK?

West. "I don't think you ever feel you're OK at Clemson with seven wins. Remember, the guy I replaced had averaged eight wins a year."

Ard. How did you feel about your team coming out of that spring?

West. "We had just lost so much, our leading passer, our leading rusher, we'd lost a lot on the lines, just a ton of scoring. We'd lost Anthony Simmons. It was almost like we were starting over like we had done in 1994, but I felt like we were more talented than we were when we had started there."

Ard. Let me backtrack for a moment because I want to talk about your final recruiting class. The notables: Keith Adams, Jackie Robinson, David Haselden, Gary Byrd, Jason Carroll, Jeremy Carroll, Altroy Bodrick, Pat Cyragalis, Joe Don Reames, Nick Eason, Eric Meekins, Akil Smith, Vince Ciurciu, Bryant McNeal, Brady Washburn & Chad Carson.

West. "More good players. Not as much attrition. We didn't have as much in the last two classes."

Ard. The season gets underway, Clemson opens with a 33-0 win over Furman, but Virginia Tech, which would go on to win nine games, hangs a 37-0 loss on your team in week two, then you lose a close one at UVA on a very controversial pass interference call.

West. "That was bad. That game killed me. They were in the top ten and we had won the game. The call just killed us. I thought that was a huge game for us. Here's a chance to go on the road and beat a highly ranked team and I felt we did that, but the way it ended was terrible."

Ard. There's a home loss to Wake Forest, a close loss to UNC on the road before you come back and shut out Maryland at home. You drop the next four, including a 10-win Georgia Tech team.

At this point, you had just two wins and the rumors were really circulating about your future. What was Robinson communicating to you at this point or what were you communicating to him?

West. "The first thing I did was I sat down with our team and this was after six or seven games. I told them, 'Hey, things are getting tight. We're not winning enough games, but I want you to keep fighting. You don't quit on me and I'll never quit on you.' We kind of had a pact.

"We didn't win a bunch, but I thought our team got better. We had Tech beat. We just didn't cover a guy. It was one of those years, unfortunately. We had a bad year. If it could go bad, it went bad that year. It was a crazy year.

"All I ever said to Bobby was , 'Look, I'm a grown man. Once you make a decision, one way or another, let us know. I don't want to hear it from somewhere else.'

"It (rumors) had gotten bad at this point. I mean bad. It was getting bad with my family. Then I pushed the issue a little bit. I said, 'Look if you're going to make a change, say something. If you're not, say something. If you're going to wait, then say something. But … say something.' Everything was just swirling so bad."

Ard. We're down to your final days now as Clemson's head coach. It is announced several days before the South Carolina game that you will not be back as head coach in 1999. What do you remember about that day?

West. "I was just disappointed. I wanted to pride myself on seeing things as they were, which I tried to do. And I knew we had gone through a bad year. We had an unacceptable year. But I also knew how close we were. I knew we weren't a 3-8 team. We were better. But the truth of the matter is that we won just three games. And that was very disappointing."

Ard. How did this go down? What do you remember about getting the word that the decision had been made?

West. "It had kind of gotten out that they were going to make a change. I was just disappointed. Because I loved that job. I still keep up with Clemson. I still want Clemson to do well.

"They fired a better coach than they hired. I made a lot of mistakes through the years there, but I felt like we knew what we wanted at this point. I thought we had our quarterback, I felt like we had our backs and I felt like we were going to have a pretty good team (in 1999)."

Ard. You weren't upset that the announcement was made before the South Carolina game, given the added distraction that it was likely going to be for your players and coaches?

West. "At first I was a little. But then - and I'll tell you what I realized afterwards - it was the best way it could have happened. Because I got an opportunity to spend Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and early Saturday with my team. I knew I was gone, so that was starting to set in. A lot of coaches get called in on a Sunday and then they're gone. That's it. It's done. It's over and you don't get to spend time with your team. But this way, it gave me a chance to be around my players for several days, players who had gone to battle with us. As disappointed as I was, I enjoyed that time with them. I really did."