The Clemson Dubcast

Thomas Austin, Mike Reed, Mickey Conn

The raw audio from three assistant coaches' recent visits with the media in advance of the 2022 football season.

Thomas Austin is in his first year as Clemson's offensive line coach, replacing longtime coach Robbie Caldwell. He gives insight into the pecking order at right guard after veteran Will Putnam moved to center and solidified that position.

Mike Reed, entering his tenth year at Clemson, gives progress reports on Jeadyn Lukus, Nate Wiggins and others in a group that lost Andrew Booth and Mario Goodrich from last year's team.

Mickey Conn, elevated to co-defensive coordinator after the departure of Brent Venables, raves about the speed and versatility of not just this safeties group but the defense across the board.

Clemson begins preseason camp Aug. 5.

Wes Goodwin, Lemanski Hall

Clemson's first-year defensive coordinator reflects on his building anticipation of filling the expansive shoes of Brent Venables.

"A lot of excitement, waking up at 4 AM and just a lot of things are running through your mind," Wes Goodwin said.

To outsiders, Goodwin was an obscure name on Clemson's staff until Dabo Swinney made the unconventional move to promote him in the wake of Venables' departure for Oklahoma.

Lemanski Hall welcomes back a load of talent to his defensive end room, but he knows it's likely that he'll lose four guys after this season. Included is Myles Murphy, who will have an opportunity to turn pro early if he has the monster season that's being forecast by Hall and others.

The Tigers begin preseason camp on Aug. 5.

 

 

C.J. Spiller, Brandon Streeter, Nick Eason

The raw, uncut audio from the three assistant coaches' visits with the media earlier this week.

Spiller is entering his second year as Clemson's running backs coach and acknowledges that last year brought a steep learning curve for him as he tries to adjust to new terminology and coaching running backs he didn't recruit.

Streeter, promoted to offensive coordinator after the departure of Tony Elliott to Virginia, discusses the offseason progress of DJ Uiagalelei.

Eason, a Clemson alum, has brightened every room he's been in since joining Dabo Swinney's staff to replace Todd Bates. That includes this week, when he started off his media session by saying this:

"Wait a second and let me sit down and fix my shirt so my man boobs look a little better."

Dabo Swinney is preparing for his 14th full season as Clemson's head coach. The Tigers begin preseason camp Aug. 5.

 

 

Bryson Carter

Bryson Carter has attended 205 straight Clemson football games. That includes the 2020 season when he traveled to Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech and sat outside the football stadiums listening to those games via radio.

At the age of 15, Carter was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. The rare genetic disorder brings a breakdown and loss of cells in the retina.

Carter lost all his vision when he was a student at Clemson and he stopped attending school.

In 2007, he began a streak of following the Tigers that he plans to extend to 206 games when the Tigers play at Georgia Tech to open the 2022 season.

He has followed Clemson via planes, trains, buses and automobiles. He took a bus to Phoenix in the 2016 season when the Tigers faced Ohio State in the playoff semifinal.

He has developed many lasting relationships during these travels with people who noticed him and offered to help him.

He has spoken to Clemson's football team at the request of Dabo Swinney. He has spoken to Clemson's Tiger Band at the request of band director Mark Spede.

At every home game, people on The Hill part when they see him making his way to his spot next to the band.

For Bryson, the Tiger Band and PA announcer Dale Gilbert paint the picture of what he cannot see unfolding on the field.

He lives in Anderson with his girlfriend Tara, who works at Clemson.

 

 

 

Where are they now, Part 1

We catch up with some prominent names of Clemson's football past to update on what they're up to, their thoughts on the state of the Tigers' program under Dabo Swinney, and their opinion on a college athletics landscape that has been transformed by NIL and the transfer portal.

In Part 1, we share our conversations with Jeff Francouer, Dalton Freeman, Tye Hill, Willie Simmons, Airese Currie and Billy Davis.

The interviews were conducted during the spring for The Clemson 30 series at Tigerillustrated.com.

 

 

 

Darien Rencher

After spending six seasons at Clemson and making a name for himself as a key figure in the player-empowerment movement, Darien Rencher now looks ahead to what's next.

He's not yet giving up his dream of playing professionally, but he has an eye toward the future and he has a number of opportunities from the connections he's made already through his energetic networking.

In the run-up to Pro Day, he spent a bunch of money living in Miami and training among some of the draft's premier prospects. He said the NIL money he earned while at Clemson funded that endeavor, and he has no regrets because the relationships he built will be fruitful long into the future.

Rencher looks back at the summer of 2020 two years ago and the lessons learned as he took the lead amid racial unrest and then amid calls to cancel the season because of the COVID threat.

In December of 2020 he was named the recipient of the Disney Spirit Award, presented annually to college football's most inspirational player, coach, team or figure.

Rencher loves Dabo Swinney and thinks he's often misunderstood by hot-take artists from afar, but he's not in total lockstep with his former head coach on matters of NIL and the transfer portal. He has complex, nuanced opinions on the state of college athletics and where it's all headed.

"It's like we're trying to put a plane together while we're flying it," he said.

Rencher said he hopes to land in the media world as a TV football analyst.

 

 

Ray Ray McElrathbey

 

The "happily ever after" theme does not apply to Ray Ray McElrathbey in the two years after his story was chronicled in the Disney movie Safety.

McElrathbey became immersed in stock-market investing and is now trying to recoup losses amid the significant economic downturn of 2022.

He started his own shipping company but has been hit hard figuratively by the rising fuel prices, and literally last month when a truck he was driving careened off a back road in New Mexico and down a ravine. He was hospitalized, the truck was totaled, and he later rented a car and drove home to Atlanta. He considers himself lucky to be alive.

McElrathbey, who took custody of his younger brother Fahmarr while at Clemson in 2006, is deeply conflicted about what was gained from the movie and what was lost.

He said he was so eager to have his story chronicled by Disney that he quickly signed up without much consideration of compensation, and he regrets that his little brother doesn't have more to show for it.

"Fahmarr trusted me to handle everything, and I didn't do it in the best way possible. I should have gotten us a better deal."

While the movie's chronicling of Ray Ray and Fahmarr brought feel-good vibes, the depictions of his mother and father were much different.

His mother had to deal with being defined as a junkie. She continues to battle drug addiction, Ray Ray says.

"The movie ended with a picture of me, Fahmarr and my mother, and we were happy. But that was after the credits, and most people don't sit through the credits," Ray Ray says.

"She's more than just an addict. Not that I blame Disney for that; it's just that I was so giddy and excited about doing a movie that I didn't think about any ramifications about what it was like for my mom to be portrayed like that. I thought it was just all good no matter how it went down."

His father, who died of heart failure at age 54 two years before the movie aired, was cast as a deadbeat dead from the beginning in 2006 when Oprah Winfrey and other national voices descended on Clemson to chronicle the story. Ray Ray was largely responsible for those portrayals, and he now punishes himself for not having more perspective and wisdom about a father who was much more loving and redeeming than he believed years ago.

The recent accident in New Mexico brought a revelation in Ray Ray: His real calling might be spending the rest of his life sharing his story, and doing more to help children in need. 

Probably the foremost lesson Ray Ray is now experiencing in his mid-30s: Severe childhood trauma takes decades to sort out and resolve.

And resolution most certainly isn't achieved with a Disney movie.

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick Sapp

Former Clemson quarterback Patrick Sapp joins the podcast to talk what it's like to be sending his son Josh to Clemson to play tight end for the Tigers.

Patrick shares what he learned of Cade Klubnik during the recruiting process, which provided a window into the personalities of Klubnik and the rest of the 2022 class.

Sapp gives his thoughts on the wild times in college athletics with NIL and the transfer portal bringing controversy and questions about whether it'll ever look remotely the same again.

Sapp spent years soliciting major gifts for Clemson, so he has keen insight into the current challenge of IPTAY trying to deal with the presence of TigerImpact and other independent NIL collectives that are also asking donors for money. 

 

Chad Carson

Several years ago, Chad Carson and his family moved to Ecuador without making any plans beyond a three-day Airbnb rental. They ended up living there for 17 months.

Now they are preparing for a move to Spain for a year.

Carson played football at Clemson from 1998 to 2001 but has carved out life and leadership that is totally separate from the sport that defined him in college and high school.

Carson's success in the real-estate business has allowed him, his wife and two children the flexibility to explore the world. It's also granted him the time to pursue his passion of making Clemson's transportation infrastructure inclusive of more than just automobiles.

Carson joins the podcast to talk about his life in football and after football, and he offers his reflections on the rapid changes in college athletics.

"I'm not saying that getting a scholarship and an education is not valuable -- it really is. But I think college football has always been a pro sport. We were treated like pro athletes all along. It's a business, and you get pushed hard by coaches who are saying 'sink or swim' because their jobs are on the line, and they're facing the pressure of getting paid millions of dollars. It's a pro sport that happens to be on a college campus. In my mind there has always, always been a disjunction there -- coaches making millions of bucks, players making nothing. It didn't sit right with me, particularly knowing that a few of those really big-time players were generating a lot of that revenue. It never seemed equitable to me."

Bobby Couch

After spending 17 years turning Clemson's major-gifts operation from basically nothing into a national force, Bobby Couch decided to leave IPTAY and preside over the Tigers' NIL collective.

As the executive director of TigerImpact, Couch reflects on what went into his move to this new endeavor and how he is wrapping his arms around the fast-moving world of NIL.

Couch says what makes this initiative special is its emphasis on charity; recently Will Shipley took the $10,000 check he received from NIL and immediately donated it to a Charlotte-area hospital.

Couch also reminisces about developing a close relationship with Dabo Swinney through weekday pickup basketball games on campus otherwise known as the NTBA (Noontime Basketball Association).

Couch spent years as the NTBA's commissioner, organizing the daily games that involved many prominent names who are now head coaches elsewhere.

Couch remembers Brent Venables crashing into him and leaving him with a black eye that he had to explain a couple days later when he spoke in front of a group of boosters before a Clemson football game.