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.

Darien Rencher

Telling the stories behind the stories of Clemson football and beyond.

Sports

As IPTAY becomes more involved with NIL fundraising as part of the 110 Society, and as the collegiate model veers even more sharply toward compensation for athletes, a big part of Billy Milam's role is conveying a modernized message to IPTAY.
In a recent issue of Orange: The Experience, Milam devoted an entire column to encouraging IPTAY members to contribute to the 110 Society.
He wrote that IPTAY "was founded on the notion that many giving some would enable Clemson to better compete with schools with access to significantly greater resources.
"For those 90 years, the Clemson Family has generously and selflessly risen to the challenge and given to IPTAY to change countless lives. The mission today remains the same."
Fundraising for NIL is more abstract and complicated than generating money for a facility that donors can admire for years to come.
And as Clemson attempts to sell the masses on giving NIL contributions on top of what they're already contributing, the messaging is important.
Milam, an Atlanta resident who has been highly accomplished in the business world, is at the forefront of IPTAY's attempts to modernize its brand and its strategies.
Milam has a bachelor's degree in architecture from Clemson, and an MBA in finance from South Carolina. He is chief executive officer of EmployBridge, America's largest industrial staffing firm.
He previously spent more than 22 years with RaceTrac, where he rose to the role of president and chief operating officer.
In 2020, Milam was named most admired CEO in professional services by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. He was named a top CEO on Glassdoor in 2021.

Billy Milam

Dr. Otis Pickett brings not just a wealth of educational distinction to his role as the historian for Clemson University, but also a wealth of life experience.
He grew up in Mount Pleasant spending time with his grandfather, a small-town medical family practitioner on Pitt Street in the Old Village.
Many of his grandfather's patients were African-Americans descendants of the Gullah people.
"He treated each one of his patients with dignity, honor and respect," Pickett said. "It didn't matter if it was the governor or a poor man who meandered aimlessly up and down Pitt Street."
In the mid-1990s Pickett and his mother began attending Trinity Baptist Church and were often the only whites who attended. With the encouragement of Rev. Herman Robinson, Pickett pursued pastoral ministry.
He is now a decorated author, historian and religious scholar. He has been known to officiate weddings of former students.
In present times, Pickett can be seen at many Clemson sporting events. He returned to his alma mater in 2022 after accepting his dream job as the third Clemson historian in the university's history (and the first Clemson alum to serve in that capacity).
Pickett's predecessor, Paul Anderson, now serves as Clemson's Director of Football Academics and Freshman Transition. Anderson joined the football program in 2021 after more than two decades at Clemson as a decorated educator and historian.
A significant part of Pickett's mission is introducing and framing the public conversation on Clemson's past, which includes difficult and complicated topics on race.
"We've got to interpret it and talk about it," he said. "I get Clemson. I love Clemson, and I don't think there's a bigger Clemson sports fan than I am. I go to everything, and I've been pulling for Clemson since I was 2.
"I love Clemson. But I'm also like: 'Hey, there's this history that may be difficult. But it also, I think, makes Clemson more interesting. I want to walk through that history. I want people to understand it.' ... We're simply talking about what people have been talking about for 200 and 300 years, which is this concept of race. And in the South that's a big concept and something that shapes our entire culture. And at Clemson it has shaped our culture in a lot of ways."
Pickett previously served in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi preparing Social Studies teachers, the Director of Social Studies Education Programs at Mississippi College, and Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at Mississippi College.
Pickett played a role in the state of Mississippi adopting a new state flag that retired the 1894 flag and its Confederate battle emblem.
Pickett is also the co-founder and co-director of the Prison to College Pipeline Program, the first program in the state of Mississippi to offer tuition free, credit bearing college courses to incarcerated students.
Pickett's grandfather, Robert Alexander Westbrook, graduated in the Class of 1950. His great grandfather, Albert Hayne McMeekin, was in the Class of 1918.
Pickett and his wife Julie (Class of 2002) live in Clemson and have three children: Martha Jane, Otis, Jr. and Thomas.  
He met his future wife on her 21st birthday at the Esso Club.

Otis Pickett

Brad Brownell visited with the media this week for the first time since his team's stirring run to the Elite Eight -- a run that was closely preceded by a brutal ACC Tournament loss to Boston College that had people screaming for his head.
Brownell kept the receipts and brought some of them to a press conference where he said he deserves more credit for the long-term work that went into the Tigers' postseason spectacle.
"I'm doing a ton of fundraising, folks, and I have been for 14 years," he said. "One of the reasons we were in the Elite Eight is because of all the fundraising, friend-raising, whatever you want to call it, for 14 years. It's one of the reasons we have a facility that's much nicer than it was. It's filling those premium seats. It doesn't just happen with NIL. It happens with improving your facilities. It happens with donor retention. It happens with getting folks to buy into your program enough that when (NIL) was new that our people were involved and engaged to be able to support the guys on our team to be ready for this opportunity when it did show up. We were there to meet it. 
 
"I do deserve a lot of credit for that. A lot. Because it's been a 14-year journey. And had we had a different coach, or a newer young coach at the time, it wouldn't have happened. There would have been no chance. 
 
"So that's obviously been a little bit of a sort spot of mine at times. Because I think that's gone not as noticed as I would like. And obviously it's vital. In college basketball right now, NIL is a major factor."
 
We present the full audio from Brownell's press conference, which lasted more than 45 minutes.

Brad Brownell

As part of Tigerillustrated.com's lengthy 25th anniversary series uncovering untold stories over that stretch of time, we continue with a glimpse back at the transformative days of 2008.
Two days after a dominant victory over South Carolina that sealed the removal of the interim tag from his title, Dabo Swinney was introduced at a press conference on the third floor of the West End Zone facility.
This is the uncut digital audio from that press conference, provided by Jeff Kallin and Matt Glenn of the Clemson Athletics Department.
Terry Don Phillips drew an ovation toward the end of the press conference when he said: 
"I say with great confidence that Dabo Swinney is going to become one of the great coaches in America."

Dabo Retrospective, Part 2

As part of Tigerillustrated.com's extensive unearthing of the history that led to Dabo Swinney becoming the figure who would transform not just a football program but an entire community, we take a glimpse back to the two-month period in 2008 when everything changed.
We present the audio from some key moments during that timeline:
-- The introduction of Swinney as interim coach on Oct. 13, 2008, when Tommy Bowden suggested a change to AD Terry Don Phillips and Phillips shocked many by elevating a receivers coach who had no head-coaching or coordinating experience;
-- The coach's show that followed his first victory in charge, an exhilarating and vital triumph at Boston College that snapped a three-game losing streak to the Eagles;
-- The press conference that followed a convincing victory over rival South Carolina, which sealed the removal of the interim title. Swinney, on what it was like to hear the crowd chanting his name as the final seconds ticked off: "I felt like Britney Spears."
-- The news coverage that accompanied the press conference two days later to announce his hiring.

Darien Rencher

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