Mutual admiration remains between Swinney, Spurrier
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Urban Meyer was in disbelief.
During an awards ceremony in Atlanta almost a decade ago, the then-Ohio State football coach turned to Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.
“You lost five in a row to South Carolina?” Meyer asked him.
Swinney responded, “Yeah, we beat everybody else though.”
While Steve Spurrier was at South Carolina, he posted a 6-4 record over Clemson. That included the five straight victories (2009-13) that Meyer, now coaching former Tigers quarterback Trevor Lawrence on the Jacksonville Jaguars, was referencing.
Spurrier, who returned to Florida to be an ambassador and consultant for the program in 2016, said there wasn’t a secret formula for success against Clemson. The Gamecocks just played well on those nights against their in-state rival, outscoring the Tigers 155-71 during that time span.
“We scored touchdowns, didn’t have to kick a bunch of field goals, made a bunch of third downs, seems like, a bunch of games,” he said. “Just played really well. Some games you play well, some games you don’t. We played very well during those five wins.”
As Swinney recalled Tuesday, it was “turnovers. That five game losing streak, we turned it over 15 times. They turned it over three.”
Swinney broke the streak in 2014 when Clemson took a 35-17 win over the Gamecocks in Death Valley, which would be the last time he would coach against Spurrier. The
Tennessee native retired midway through the 2015 season. Since 2014, the Tigers have won the last six meetings.
Clemson will try for a seventh straight Palmetto Bowl victory in the regular-season finale Saturday in Columbia.
Before either arrived at their respective programs, Spurrier and Swinney had known each other from when Swinney played at Alabama and Spurrier was the Gators’ head coach. Including Swinney’s time as a graduate assistant and wide receivers coach with the Crimson Tide, he saw Spurrier and Florida in the SEC championship game in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1999. The Gators won three of the five and totaled five conference titles during the 1990s. The Tide won in 1992 and 1999.
During the course of the Clemson-Carolina rivalry in the 2000s, Spurrier and Swinney exchanged comments back and forth publicly, which the former said was “for funsies.”
On one occasion in 2012, Spurrier said his players had never been to Death Valley, discrediting Memorial Stadium’s designated nickname, to which Swinney responded that the real USC is in California.
The fan bases always took it a step further, though. One year at a booster club meeting, Spurrier, who’s originally from Tennessee, recalled having a conversation with a fan about the Clemson-Carolina rivalry. She told the former Gamecocks head coach she didn’t care if the team lost all of its games as long as it beat Clemson.
“I said, ‘I’d rather win them all and lose to Clemson. Man, we’d have a heckuva season if we could do that.’ She looked at me funny-like,” Spurrier said.