The Clemson Dubcast

Jack Leggett

Jack Leggett still hasn't gotten over the events that led to his firing in 2015 after 22 seasons at Clemson.

He also can't reconcile Clemson's lack of recognition for the long run of success achieved under his watch.

"It's like they've tried to erase what we did there," he said.

It's been almost seven years, but the wounds are still fresh for the 68-year-old Leggett as he recalls the final year of his tenure that ended abruptly when then-AD Dan Radakovich told him it was over.

Leggett said he received 600 text messages from all over after the parting, including from every head coach in the ACC and prominent baseball people all across the state of South Carolina.

One figurehead who didn't reach out was Ray Tanner. Leggett suggests Radakovich consulted with his AD counterpart at South Carolina before making the move to fire Leggett and hire current coach Monte Lee.

Leggett, who lives in Greenville, spends an hour-plus with the The Dubcast to share what he's up to now. It includes watching a lot of college baseball, including the program he used to coach.

 

 

 

 

Richard Gooch

Richard Gooch has served the Clemson community for more than two decades as a member of the city police department.

In January he suffered a heart attack, his second in 12 years, and almost lost his life. A week later, he lost his father to suicide.

Gooch joins the podcast to spread awareness about taking care of yourself, and about trying to spot the signs of severe depression in loved ones.

"I hope it helps someone," he said. "I messed up the first 47 years of my life, and now I have to earn the rest of it. I hope this can help someone, touch someone, and change somebody's life for the better."

Gooch lives in Clemson with his wife and 10-year-old daughter. He is the lieutenant of investigations and support services for the City of Clemson Police Department.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chase Brice

Chase Brice was a savior of the 2018 national championship season when he came off the bench to lift Clemson to a come-from-behind win over Syracuse in Death Valley.

Having transferred to Duke and then Appalachian State, Brice joins the podcast to reflect on the past two years of his life and what he left behind at Clemson.

Brice still has vivid memories of watching Trevor Lawrence for the first time in the spring of 2018 when Lawrence made it clear he was going to be an instant superstar.

Brice also recalls the agonizing few days after the coaches made Lawrence the starter four games into the 2018 season. Brice was extremely close with Kelly Bryant and remains so. He said he didn't believe Bryant was truly going to leave until he did.

Brice also shares some priceless stories about practice confrontations with Brent Venables (AKA Jimmy Greenbeans) when Brice was the scout-team quarterback and Venables was angry that Brice wasn't throwing it where he wanted.

Brice is preparing for his final season of college after starting all 14 games last season for Appalachian State and earning Sun Belt Newcomer of the Year honors.

 

Will Swinney

After five years on the football team at Clemson, Will Swinney joins the podcast to talk about adjusting to the real world. For now that entails pursuing his MBA and working as an intern for a Greenville real-estate firm.

Swinney has vivid memories of some of the key junctures over the last 15 years.

Including 2006, when his dad came home and told his family he was going to give up coaching (his sons talked him out of it).

Including 2007, when Nick Saban called offering his father a job and Will begged him not to take it.

Including that day in 2008 when Tommy Bowden was out and Dabo Swinney was in.

"The next day I walk into my fourth-grade class and everyone is staring at me," he said.

Including that day in January of 2011 when his father made changes to his staff and Will realized he had to say goodbye to some of his good friends.

Will has been with his father through it all, including on recruiting trips and on the sideline from 2009 to 2016 when he was responsible for keeping the "Touch Chart," which tabulated the touches for the team's best offensive playmakers and made sure they were getting the ball enough (it started in 2009 when Dabo was determined to give C.J. Spiller the ball as much as possible).

Will grew up closely following recruiting and all coverage and commentary on Clemson football, which meant he had to learn how to handle criticism and outright meanness on message boards.

Will says the angriest his father ever was with him was when he was in kindergarten and decided to dial 911.

"That was a pretty bad whooping," he said.

Will said his favorite season of all was 2021 when the Tigers won six straight games to reach 10 wins for the 11th consecutive season.

 

 

Jack Maddox

Jack Maddox achieved perfection in 2020 and 2021 as Clemson's starting deep snapper for field goals and punts.

He never had one bad snap in a game, and now he's hoping that consistency and his work ethic will make him attractive to an NFL team.

Maddox, who's currently training for the draft while also pursuing his MBA, visited with the podcast to reflect on his career and his path from Boston to the foothills of South Carolina.

Maddox also shares his discomfort with vast and rapid changes taking place in college athletics including NIL and the transfer portal.

Through his career, Maddox said he usually developed a good feel for how each Clemson team was going to be by the summer entering the season. He said he had some concerns last summer about the 2021 team's capabilities, based on the lack of edge he saw during voluntary workouts.

Maddox is still in the Clemson area and training with former Tiger Joe Don Reames at TNT Sports.

 

Mark Spede

When Mark Spede took over at Clemson in 2002, the Tigers' marching band consisted of 160 members. Now the number is 356, and the football team's six straight trips to the College Football Playoff (and two national titles) gave Spede a trove of stories to share from criss-crossing the country with his large traveling party.

He remembers trying to control his emotions in January of 2017 in Tampa immediately after Hunter Renfrow cradled Deshaun Watson's pass in the end zone. It normally takes three seconds for the band to crank up Tiger Rag after a touchdown. This time it took 17 seconds for him to get himself and everyone else under control.

As the president of the College Band Directors National Association, Spede found himself with no choice but to dive head-first into the science of a pandemic in March of 2020 after everything shut down and the entire performing-arts world faced existential questions.

He helped spearhead the International Performing Arts Aerosol study, which ended up pioneering the path to marching bands at the college and high school level reconvening and playing safely.

Spede's leadership and research drew so much attention in the early days of the pandemic that he was receiving 400 to 500 emails a day from not just the United States but abroad. And he said he answered every one of them.

Dr. Spede is Professor, Director of Bands, Director of Tiger Band, and Conductor of the Symphonic Band at Clemson University, where he administrates the band program (symphonic, athletic, and jazz bands). He is the recipient of the Clemson University 2009 Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities), and three Clemson University Board of Trustees Awards for Faculty Excellence (2008, 2009, and 2012). He teaches a number of courses, including two for the Calhoun Honors College: aesthetics of music and science of music. In 2012, he conducted the Clemson University Symphonic Band at venues in London, England, for the Summer Olympic Games. Also in 2012, he founded the Clemson Faculty Jazz Quintet, for which he plays drums.

Spede earned a Bachelor of Music from the University of Michigan (1984), and Master of Music from Ball State University (1988), and a Doctor of Musical Arts from The University of Texas at Austin (1998). 

 

 

 

 

 

Riley Morningstar

At 26 years old, Riley Morningstar is younger than everyone who works for him at The Journal newspaper in Seneca.

Less than a year ago, Morningstar became the editor of the newspaper and dived into making it the news outlet of record in Oconee County.

When he was a student at Clemson, Morningstar was an intern for Tigerillustrated.com. He also served as a student assistant in the men's basketball program during the Tigers' run to the Round of 16.

Morningstar talks how he chose the journalism path even though Clemson doesn't have a journalism school. He shares what it's like to draw the ire of public officials and even the public when he presses for information he deems of value to his readers.

And he shares what it was like in the fall of 2016 when he asked a question Dabo Swinney didn't like and found himself on the receiving end of an epic Swinney tirade. Morningstar still has the audio of the rant, which came a few days after Clemson's only loss in a national championship season.

 

 

Mike Noonan

Mike Noonan, fresh off bringing Clemson its first men's soccer championship since 1987, joins the podcast to talk what it means and how his life is different.

Noonan also retraces the fateful steps that led his choosing Clemson after a 15-year career leading Brown University. Syracuse had also offered him its coaching job, and he ended up choosing the Tigers because of the warmth he and his family felt during their trip down for the interview.

Within Noonan's first year on the job at Clemson in 2010, he was appalled at the heat on a second-year football coach named Dabo Swinney amid a losing season. From what he had observed of Swinney during that short time, Noonan believed Swinney had the makings of a great coach.

Years later, Noonan was not happy when his practice fields were displaced by construction on Clemson's new football facility -- construction that began when the soccer team was in the NCAA playoffs. He remembers Swinney promising him that he'd help him get a much better soccer facility, and that promise was later fulfilled.

 

Behind the scenes with Cade Klubnik

In late December, Tigerillustrated.com reported an in-depth series of articles on freshman quarterback Cade Klubnik.

In this podcast, we present the lengthy interviews we conducted with Klubnik's mother Kim, his paster Brad Thomas (a Clemson grad) and Klubnik himself.

In less than a month, Klubnik will take the field for Clemson and begin contending with starting quarterback DJ Uiagalelei as the Tigers try to add more flash to an offense that sagged in 2021.

Klubnik was the No. 1 ranked quarterback in the country and led Westlake High School to back-to-back state championships, never losing a game as a starter.

In the interviews, he and his mother reflect on what it was like upon hearing that Ty Simpson, whom Clemson had offered, chose Alabama to pave the way for Klubnik to join Dabo Swinney's Tigers.

 

 

David Shelton

In 2015, David Shelton lost a child to opioid addiction when his 26-year-old son Ryan died of an overdose. Ryan was a massive Clemson fan, and his ashes are buried across the street from The Hill at Death Valley and in Lake Hartwell.

Three weeks ago, Shelton lost another son to addiction when son Justin, also 26, died of a heroin overdose while living in a tent city behind a Wal-Mart.

The first time it happened, David was embarrassed and ashamed and dealt with the torturous grief privately.

This time, he's determined to make a second unfathomable loss as public as he can in hopes of serving his community and preventing the same thing from happening to others.

Shelton is a longtime sportswriter for The Post and Courier newspaper, covering high schools and small colleges.