The Clemson Dubcast

Tommy West has decided it's time to hang up his whistle after more than four decades in the coaching profession.

"It's a young man's game now," said the 69-year-old West, who was on Rick Stockstill's fired staff at Middle Tennessee State.

West has kept busy playing golf and taking care of his yard. He says the biggest question is how he'll find the fulfillment that came when he experienced success through grinding away as a coach and recruiter.

West goes in-depth on his time at Clemson as an assistant under Danny Ford, and as the Tigers' head coach from 1993 to 1998.

Clemson was trying to figure out what it wanted to be back then, and that meant trying to figure out how invested it wanted to be in winning football games.

The facilities suffered as a result, and it was West who first came up with the idea to build a complete football-operations facility in the west end zone of Memorial Stadium.

That facility finally began taking shape well into Tommy Bowden's tenure, and the first head coach to actually occupy the structure was Dabo Swinney in 2009.

West shares some vivid and colorful memories of the old days, including when the fired staff got together on the practice fields in the wee hours of the morning after their final game, a win over South Carolina.

They built a fire and spent hours reminiscing and connecting for a final time. Defensive coordinator Reggie Herring was so angry about the firing that he threw his Clemson apparel into the fire and watched it burn.

Soon thereafter Herring was retained by Tommy Bowden and wearing new Clemson gear.

West spent the next year living in Clemson as Bowden ushered in a new era.

"I was a total mess," he said. "I was lost."

A decade ago, Thad Turnipseed left Alabama to join Dabo Swinney at Clemson and played a major role in turning the Tigers' football program into a cutting-edge operation on numerous levels.

Turnipseed, who spent 18 months at Oklahoma under Brent Venables, returned to Clemson with his family last summer and is currently spending most of his time in real estate.

Turnipseed, who recently became a grandfather, joins The Dubcast to reflect on the glory days at Clemson and whether Swinney can get the Tigers back to the top.

He also expresses great concern about the state of college football and where things are headed.

"My job was always solving problems, and I prided myself in being able to figure things out," he said.

"I have no idea how to solve this one."

Dabo Swinney sits down to discuss the progress of his team a week into spring practice.

Swinney reflects on the talent of freshman receiver Bryant Wesco and what he could bring to an offense in desperate need of playmaking.

Cade Klubnik enters Year 2 as the starter feeling more comfortable in the second year running Garrett Riley's offense.

Klubnik believes the Tigers are going to have weapons galore on the outside to make the offense truly lethal for the first time since Trevor Lawrence and other superstars were in the program.

Clemson's spring game is April 6.

Last week, Gene Sapakoff announced he's leaving The Post and Courier after 38 years at the Charleston newspaper.

One of the strange elements of his departure: The leadership at the paper hasn't given him an opportunity to write a farewell column in the sports section that featured his mug shot since the 1980s.

Sapakoff joins The Dubcast to reflect on when and why he chose to hang it up, and what his next chapter looks like.

He also shares a wealth of anecdotes and memories of covering the biggest names in the Palmetto State's sports history.

He recalls getting cussed at by Danny Ford when he wrote a column labeling the coach the "Prince of Paranoia" in 1987.

And more recently, Sapakoff was publicly blasted by Shane Beamer at a press conference after he criticized Beamer's hire of offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains.

While it's natural for old-timers to lament the departure of this state's last prominent newspaper sports columnist, Sapakoff has an optimistic outlook on the present and future of sports coverage in South Carolina and beyond.

In many ways, the media and journalism industry has become almost totally disfigured over the past two decades.

Yet inside Clemson's Sports Communication program there are students who find a multitude of ways to distinguish themselves.

Grayson Mann is a senior who has spent his time at college starting his own podcast, writing for Tigerillustrated.com, doing video play-by-play for North Greenville basketball, and covering high school games for a local newspaper.

Toby Corriston is a freshman who has already developed quite a portfolio of photography, writing and stand-up video he does on his own after Clemson sporting events.

Where is the media industry heading? No one can predict that. But Mann and Corriston, who both serve as interns at Tigerillustrated.com, are positioning themselves to be marketable on a multitude of platforms post-graduation.

Mann and Corriston visit with The Dubcast to share how they got to this point, and what they aspire to do hereafter.

Paul Strelow, longtime recruiting reporter and analyst for Tigerillustrated.com, is also a family man and a father of five.

He's been fully devoted to the lives of his children over the years, and that's included serving as a coach of their various teams.

Strelow gives his perspective on the climate at youth and high school sporting events as fans get edgier and more willing to chastise not just refs but opposing players.

The state of the media industry is almost unrecognizable from the one Strelow joined as a newspaper reporter in the late 1990s. Where are things headed? What advice does he have for young people who might be interested in trying to join this industry?

And what of Clemson football recruiting, with the Tigers in play for an elite recruiting class in 2025? Will the people who eviscerate Dabo Swinney for being too stuck in his ways consider changing their tune?

Also, is Clemson's football program more active with NIL than is often perceived?

Finally, how confident is Strelow that Cade Klubnik can give Clemson what it needs at quarterback?

Mike Noonan, fresh off Clemson's second men's soccer national title in three years, joins The Dubcast to reflect on the journey.

In August of 2022, Noonan lost his father. And then this past November his mother passed away as Noonan and the Tigers were pursuing Clemson's fourth men's soccer national title in its history.

Noonan opens up about his upbringing, including his father's remarkable life that included:

Graduating from MIT and the Harvard Business School;

Working on the Apollo Space Project;

Modernizing Taiwan's rail system;

Playing a role in the merger of the AFL and NFL.

In addition, Mike's younger brother Mark is the commissioner of the Canadian Premier League.

Noonan reminisces about first hearing from Clemson when he was the head coach at Brown. He and his wife Deb fell in love with the campus and surrounding community on their first visit.

Noonan, who has believed in Dabo Swinney from the beginning, had a rough patch with the football coach when the building of the Tigers' opulent operations facility meant the displacement of Noonan's practice fields.

Swinney assured Noonan he and the soccer program would be much better off in the end, and when it came time to raise money for the new soccer facility Swinney lived up to his word.

"He was right," Noonan said.

Noonan also delves into his love of music, and spending time in the mid- to late-1980s watching Phish once a month in a club called Nectar's in Burlington, VT.

Noonan's wife spent college in the same dorm as Phish's members, one floor below.

Clemson will hold a parade Saturday at 11:30 AM to celebrate the soccer team's national title.

Billy Davis rejoins The Dubcast to share what it's like having a daughter on the verge of completing a student-athlete career as a swimmer at the University of Kentucky.

Davis, one of the few Clemson fans who was fully behind Dabo Swinney during a rough 2010 season, had his own doubts over the past year: He correctly predicted the Tigers would fall at Duke in the season-opener, and he was with many in wondering if Swinney would make necessary changes to his staff.

Davis, who had a long career in the Secret Service, recalls the brawl at the end of Clemson's win over South Carolina in 1983.

Probation meant that it was his last game in a Clemson uniform.

Davis said he didn't take part in the brawl. He used it as an opportunity to run to the other side of the field and visit his girlfriend, who was a Gamecock cheerleader.

Davis is a longtime subscriber to Tigerillustrated.com, and a frequent poster on the West End Zone message board.

Chris Low, longtime chronicler of college football for ESPN.com, joins The Dubcast to reflect on the recent monumental events at Alabama.

Low, who broke the news that Nick Saban was retiring, said he received a tip about two hours before Saban announced it to his team. 

Low said Saban indicated to Alabama AD Greg Byrne late in the season that he was leaning toward retirement, but he wasn't certain of it until the morning that he actually announced it.

Though Alabama contacted Dabo Swinney to gauge his interest in the job, Low believes Washington's Kalen DeBoer and Florida State's Mike Norvell were the top two candidates on Byrne's list.

Low also gives his thoughts on the state of college football, which a growing number of people believe is unsustainable in its current form with NIL and the transfer portal creating fluid and unpredictable situations just about everywhere.

C.D. Davies of the 110 Society joins The Dubcast for an extended conversation about the complicated, murky world of NIL in college football.

Davies believes the common narratives about Dabo Swinney being against NIL do not comport with reality, and a chief piece of evidence is the coach's very decision to hire Davies to preside over the football program's NIL operations.

Davies, a 1986 Clemson grad who went on to be highly successful executive in the banking and lending industry, believes his experience dealing with regulatory authorities makes him highly suited to dealing with the NCAA's ever-changing messaging and regulating of how players are compensated.

Rules explicitly prohibit pay-for-play, yet the practice is so commonplace that television announcers discuss such arrangements about specific high-profile players during their broadcasts of games.

"I see that and hear it," Davies said. "That's flat-out cheating. We haven't done that, and we're not going to do it. We're going to follow the rules."

Davies takes us behind the NIL curtain and shares what it's really like as Clemson navigates the process of fundraising for NIL, and arranging deals with its athletes.

He says "donor exhaustion" is very real, at Clemson and everywhere else. His model for the future is exploring and creating a commercial side of NIL funding that relieves a significant amount of pressure on fans to fund yet another expensive reality of major-college athletics competition.