Dabo Swinney's 'why not us?' attitude has Clemson in CFP title game

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – They brought out three huge bowls full of oranges and on top of a celebratory stage, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney figured they weren't doing any good just sitting there.

Everything around him was a frenzy – screaming fans, streaming tears and, most importantly, a scoreboard that read Clemson 37, Oklahoma 17.

The Tigers, the Clemson Tigers, off to the national title game in Glendale, Ariz.

"It's awesome," Swinney beamed.

He was soon staring at those oranges and began grabbing them like it was a shopping spree.

He didn't get to this podium alone. He knew that. No one can do that at Clemson, this one-time agricultural school from a little town in the mountains of South Carolina – how many Americans even know South Carolina has mountains?

The place fights for attention and funding in its own state with the University of South Carolina down in the biggest city and the state capital. It fights for turf as an ACC member in the heart of SEC country. It fights its history, not as the 1981 national champion, but the years since when it would often underachieve at the worst possible moments.

It fights for respect, entering this game as an underdog despite being unbeaten, ranked No. 1 in the country and dominating OU just a year ago.

So now that Clemson was here, on this warm, humid, glorious New Year's Eve in South Florida, now that it was 60 minutes out in the desert from everything, Dabo wanted to share the whole damn thing with every damn body … one orange at a time.

So he started flipping them out in the crowd, seeking out staffers and spouses and cheerleaders and regular old fans and everyone who helped along the way. One orange at a time, there went the bowl game's televised prop. One orange at a time, Dabo Swinney kept trying to pull everyone up and in on the journey.

"That's the way he is," Carol Swinney said of her youngest son. "That's the way he's always been. He wants everyone in on this ride, this journey."

He quickly ran out of oranges. He probably could have plucked the whole state of Florida.

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You don't just happen upon Clemson, S.C. You can motor by on the I-85 and ignore the exit that will wind you 15 or so miles up there.

Yet once a lot of people make it there, they find some place unique, some place they believe so deeply in they drape themselves in orange and purple and try to convince everyone else just what they are missing, if they'd only come along too.

The result is a major state university that feels like some extended family. Only it's so homey that its crest is a big old paw print they put on every conceivable article of clothing, signage and even the roads.

Dabo Swinney got there in 2003, an assistant coach arriving from his alma mater, Alabama, which doesn't ever have to remind anyone about its existence or its football relevance. Swinney brought a Tide mentality to the hills and began pressing his boss, then-head coach Tommy Bowden, to chase bigger and faster players.

Swinney believed in Clemson in ways not even the most devoted Clemson fan did. Why don't we wade into the fiercest recruiting battles and win them? Why can't we be No. 1? Look around, he'd argue. What's better than here? What's Bama or LSU or Florida State got that we don't?

At first glance, a lot. At the time Clemson was a perennial six-, seven-, eight-win team. Good but never great, unbeaten at the tailgate, but that's about it.

You don't tell Dabo Swinney not to believe though, so he locked in on a brilliant athlete named C.J. Spiller, a five-star, top-10 recruit. Spiller hailed from tiny Lake Butler, Fla., a little north of Gainesville, a little east of Tallahassee and with Pete Carroll and Nick Saban and everyone else jetting in as often as possible.

Bowden told him he was wasting his time.

"I was told you can't go recruit C.J. Spiller," Swinney told Yahoo Sports a couple years ago. "[I was told], 'You're wasting your time recruiting that guy. He ain't coming to Clemson.'

"That was the mentality here," Swinney continued. "I don't get that. I'm like, 'What do you mean I can't recruit him? He takes my call every week. He likes me. He says he wants to visit.'"

By January 2006, as signing day approached, Spiller told his mother he wasn't going to nearby Florida. She reportedly assumed he'd be at FSU then. When he held a press conference at his high school and announced for Clemson, it was initially met with an awkward couple seconds of stunned silence.

Spiller, of course, became an All-American at Clemson and the ninth overall pick in the 2010 NFL draft and opened up a pipeline for the Tigers in Florida high schools that delivered through Sammy Watkins and Tony Steward through current stars such as wide receiver Artavis Scott, the leading receiver Thursday, and Jayron Kearse, he of eight tackles.

Before that though Spiller delivered in 2008 when he produced 142 all-purpose yards to help the Tigers beat hated South Carolina 31-14 in the game that propelled Dabo, then the team's anonymous interim coach, into the full-time guy. That audacious recruiting philosophy has never stopped paying off as Swinney kept pushing for more and more and more.

Soon he was beating not just South Carolina in-state, but regularly getting blue-chip players out of everywhere.

Star quarterback DeShaun Watson (187 yards and one touchdown throwing, 145 yards and another touchdown rushing vs. Oklahoma) and running back Wayne Gallman (150 years, two touchdowns) arrived from Georgia. Leading tackler T.J. Green (10 tackles) is from Alabama. He landed five-star defensive lineman Christian Wilkins (three tackles and a 31-yard reception on a critical fake punt) all the way from Massachusetts.

"It's a family here," Watson said.

Maybe only Dabo believed all of this was possible.

"It's been 34 years since Clemson had a chance to win a national championship," Swinney said. "Seven years ago when I got this job I knew we would be here, it was just a matter of when. This year we've got the chance to knock the roof off of it."

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The Orange Bowl was mostly orange on Thursday, 70, 75 percent Clemson fans. You can drive here a lot easier from South Carolina than Oklahoma, but still, the turnout was pronounced and astounding.

"When we pulled up to the stadium, the first thing any of our coaches said was Clemson is taking nothing for granted tonight," defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. "We brought some Death Valley to Miami."

The Clemson Family turned out because now everyone believes. There's always been fan support, always been Death Valley up there, but now there is the powerful sense of playing with confidence, playing as the favorite, playing in the middle of this tidal wave of momentum.

"I saw from afar what was happening," Venables said of 2012, when he left Oklahoma after 13 years to become the defensive coordinator for the Tigers. For many it looked like a step down. "When I came to meet him and saw how real and genuine he was, then I saw what the secret sauce was.

"There was just an innocence about it," Venables continued. "There was a purity that was hard to grasp but I sensed it when I came. My wife knew. That's all we talked about. I just loved the culture and the environment."

Clemson doesn't apologize for anything anymore. Clemson doesn't have to doubt anymore. If nothing else, Dabo has brought the supporters that – he's brought them the feeling that they can celebrate and enjoy and dare to dream for more.

Swinney sent three players home earlier this week for violation of team rules and didn't spend a second expressing woe or panic. And when Clemson whipped up on Oklahoma he didn't sit there with a sour look about how this was just a step and no one should get too excited.

What about "balance" he was asked.

"We ain't trying to balance nothing," Swinney said. "We're trying to enjoy today. We aren't worrying about next week. We'll worry about that on Monday when it gets here."

New Year's Eve was about the party now. Clemson was about the celebration.

And there in the middle, with confetti falling all around him and the circus he created, was Dabo Swinney tossing oranges to everyone he could.