It’s not that often that Clemson football fans see an NFL coach make his way to Tiger Town outside of draft season, but that’s exactly what we’re going to see this weekend.
Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden will be making his first ever trip to Clemson this weekend as he will be the guest speaker for Dabo Swinney’s All In Ball on Saturday.
Gruden, according to reports from The Clemson Insider, will fly in a day early so that he can spend time with Swinney and get a personal tour of the campus and facilities.
"“A lot of times you just want to make things as easy as possible,” Swinney said during a radio appearance on WCCP-FM earlier this week. “We’ll get you in, we’ll get you out. And he’s like, no. He said, ‘Man, I want to hang out.’ So I’m like, ‘Well, OK.’“So, he’s going to come in on Friday and we’re going to hang out and spend some time and talk some ball and show him Clemson on Saturday and just really take some time to tour him around a little bit, and then the event is Saturday night. So, he’s really excited about it. He’s been pumped about this for a year. But we’ve just become friends, and he loves our guys and is excited to come experience Clemson.”"
The Raiders have affectionately become ‘Clemson football west’ under Gruden’s watch
There are five former Tigers who currently reside on the Raiders’ roster:
- DE Clelin Ferrell
- CB Trayvon Mullen
- DB Tanner Muse
- WR Hunter Renfrow
- OG John Simpson
All of them have been drafted under Gruden’s watch. Just for reference, no team in the NFL has more than three Tigers on their active roster outside of the Raiders.
Because of the sheer amount of volume, Tiger fans have enjoyed calling the Raiders ‘Clemson West’ over the past couple of seasons and the belief is that Las Vegas could continue to accumulate stars from the program in the future.
It’s pretty cool to see Gruden flying in early to get a feel for what Clemson is all about. That means something in a big way even if it doesn’t seem like much on the surface. There’s a reason that the Raiders have been drawn to Clemson players in the past few draft cycles and it all starts with the culture that Dabo Swinney has implemented in his program.
Gruden will get to see that culture on full display and in-person this weekend.