Part I: The Clemson football turnaround under Dabo Swinney

When did you know that the Clemson football program was different under Dabo Swinney?

Clemson football is coming off their 10th consecutive double-digit win season. Prior to Swinney’s arrival, the Tigers had just seven seasons of 10 or more wins.

The Tigers are now a fixture among the elite of college football but 10 years ago the Tigers were coming off a 6-7 season that included an embarrassing loss to South Florida in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte.

There was a lot of I told you so being offered on message boards and talk radio in regards to promoting an assistant coach with no coordinator experience to head coach.

What made it worse, Clemson football had followed up their first appearance in the ACC Championship game with a losing season.

Fast forward through a turbulent offseason in 2011.

The Tigers started out 8-0 number five in the BCS poll and would go onto win their first ACC Championship since 1991. There are two games that come to mind when I think about when I knew this program was different.

The 2011 Maryland game stands out to me. I lived in DC at the time so the biannual trek over to College Park was always fun.

It was a night game at Byrd Stadium, the Tigers came into the game 6-0 having knocked off the defending national champions Auburn early in the season at home. It was quite the atmosphere for a primetime matchup.

The game could not have gotten off to a worse start for the Tigers. With 8:38 left in the first half Clemson football found themselves down 28-10, the Tiger faithful in attendance were shell shocked. While the expletives from the Maryland fans would have made a sailor blush.

Clemson responded with a touchdown before the half to cut the Terrapin lead to 28-17.

Maryland came out of the locker room and went on an 8-play drive that extended their lead to 35-17. The Tigers’ second 18 point deficit of the night. Tajh Boyd responded with two touchdown throws to trim the Terrapin lead to three going into the third quarter.

The Tigers would take their first lead of the game after a Touchdown pass to Jaron Brown to lead 42-38.

Maryland would respond with a scoring drive of their own to take the lead at 45-42 with 7:35 remaining. Sammy Watkins returned the ensuing kickoff 89-yards to give the Tigers the lead right back 49-45.

Andre Ellington capped off the night with a 44-yard touchdown and 212-yard rushing performance.

What you saw that night was mental toughness and a fight that you had not seen from this Clemson football program in a long time.

The character that was displayed that night said Clemson football was changing. How many Clemson teams prior could have fallen down 18 points and fought back let alone do it twice and come back to win by double digits?

Despite how the Tigers would stumble down the stretch, the improbable win at Maryland demonstrated there was a different mental makeup of Clemson football under Swinney, and looking back now, this was the beginning of the Tiger turnaround that has led to 10 straight seasons of 10 or more wins.