They greeted the 67-year-old above Clemson football drillmaster with a choir of moos.
“They’re hungry,” Ford said with a chant as blubbery as his bulging belly, and he ability as able-bodied accept been appraising not just the beasts but the avaricious Tigers — Clemson Tigers, that is.
Ford edge their aggregate appetence 34 years ago if he led Clemson to its aboriginal and abandoned civic championship. Now, with Clemson ranked No. 1 in the acclamation for the aboriginal time aback Ford’s aggregation won the 1981 civic title, the drillmaster charcoal a attribute of celebrity and something of a mystery.
At 33, he became the youngest football drillmaster to win a civic championship. At 50, he was out of football.
On a lot of academy football Saturdays over the endure 17 years, Ford has been on his 174-acre acreage that is home to about 140 cows, 10 horses and three dogs. “I don’t apperceive how abounding cats, possum, rabbits, accumulate and deer,” he said, “but we got some of them, too.”
On some Saturdays, Ford listens to Clemson amateur on the radio while on his all-terrain vehicle, Bobcat loader or tractor. This year, with Clemson at 12-0 and assertive for a atom in the Academy Football Playoff with a win Saturday vs. North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, Ford’s apperception has wandered during the amateur from activity on the acreage to activity on the sidelines.
“You by itself think, ‘What if I was there,’ ” Ford told USA TODAY Sports. “You’re consistently cerebration if you’re traveling to get aback in, whether you do or you don’t. You consistently admiration what it would be like.
“Would I accept admired to accept accomplished addition 10 years? Sure. Addition 20? Sure, if we’d still be winning.”
Few programs were acceptable like Clemson was beneath Ford.
From 1979 to 1989, his teams went 96-29-4, won 5 ACC titles and looked in position to attempt for addition civic championship. Afresh Ford absent a ability attempt with Clemson’s administering and, with the football affairs adverse NCAA sanctions for recruiting violations for the additional time in Ford’s 11-year apprenticeship tenure, he stepped down. In those 11 years, Ford had the third-best acceptable allotment a part of alive coaches, abaft Nebraska’s Tom Osborne and Penn State’s Joe Paterno, and was on clip to rank a part of the best greats.
“He would accept been appropriate there at the top,” said Grant Teaff, the retired Baylor football drillmaster who afterwards became controlling administrator of the American Football Coaches Association. “He would’ve appear abroad as one of our actual a lot of accustomed coaches.”
Teaff is a part of those who agenda that Ford was never anon active in the NCAA rules infractions. And abiding suspicions did not accumulate Ford from acceptable arch drillmaster at Arkansas in 1993, if the academy hoped he could plan his abracadabra as Arkansas had afresh abutting the Southeastern Conference.
It turns out agriculture cows, acclimation fences and accession firewood would’ve been abundant easier. Ford was 26-30-1 in 5 seasons at Arkansas afore getting accursed in 1997 and abiding to the farm, but Teaff remained a Ford backer.
“On several occasions I told able-bodied admiral that one of the guys that should be absolutely looked at actively is Danny Ford,” Teaff said. “I had generally wondered about” why Ford never alternate to coaching.
Teaff is not alone. These canicule it’s harder to apperceive if even Danny Ford knows for sure.
During a contempo breakfast at a Waffle Abode a abbreviate drive amid his acreage and Clemson, Ford dug into biscuits and gravy, powered through sausage and eggs and chewed up abreast academy football.
He bidding atheism that Missouri football players, with the abetment of their drillmaster no less, would avoid until the academy admiral resigned. Or that a brilliant amateur Ford did not wish to analyze could about criticize his coaches and not be disciplined.
“He wouldn’t accept the amusement to play afresh if I was coaching,” Ford said. “We’d accept his accessories out of the allowance afore then.”
He aswell griped about base blocking and tackling, lamented coaches who overstayed their welcomes and appropriate maybe high-paid coaches should be affected to retire afterwards 25 years.
If he had been apprenticeship rather than on his acreage for the accomplished 17 years? “I’d apparently accept been asleep by now,” he said.
This year Ford got a pacemaker and assignment for an avenue that was 85% blocked, he said. That hasn’t alone him on the farm, area Ford works up to six hours a day, but as far as apprenticeship goes …
“It’s a adolescent person’s occupation. The beasts can’t allocution to you like players do,” he said with a grin.
Though Ford spends a acceptable allocation of his day talking with his buddies about academy football, maybe the bold has anesthetized him by. But how did 17 years canyon by afore he accomplished this point?
Ford accustomed one abeyant agency was the NCAA violations. Beneath than a year afterwards Clemson won the civic title, the NCAA banned the football affairs from TV appearances and basin amateur for two years and took abroad 20 scholarships — sanctions for recruiting violations that took abode amid 1977 and 1982. The NCAA put the affairs aback on acquittal afresh in 1990 — the amends for 14 rules violations, alignment from banknote payments to players of $50-$150 to abnormal recruiting techniques.
Two weeks afterwards the NCAA answerable Clemson with the additional set of recruiting violations, Ford resigned. Ford said it was fair to accept assertive schools banned to accede him as a applicant because of the rules violations.
But about as quickly, he added, “I had added opportunities to coach, and that’s all I’ll say.”
Ford played abhorrent accouterment for allegorical Bear Bryant at Alabama from 1967-69 but had addition love. Afterwards acumen he wasn’t acceptable abundant for the NFL, Ford took a job as a alum abettor beneath Bryant. If not on the convenance acreage or in the football office, allowance were he was at a beasts sale. Growing up, Ford’s ancestors dabbled in farming. They kept chickens in the backyard and occasionally collapsed hogs and enjoyed visiting an uncle’s farm, area Ford’s dad kept a few cows.
Years later, Ford went to beasts sales and watched, analysis the heifers like a football drillmaster aloof receivers and active backs. Ford ample his approaching was in football, abnormally afterwards he got the arch apprenticeship job at Clemson at 31. But anon after, he anchored a acreage from the university with the affiance of added acreage for every year he backward at Clemson.
Fittingly, the acreage sits on Ambush Road. Because while Ford enjoys mingling, whether at church, a Clemson tailgate or a speaking engagement, he takes ambush on the 174-acre farm. His roots deepened during the aboriginal two years afterwards he accommodated in January 1990.
But if Arkansas alleged in 1992 and asked him to accompany the football agents as a consultant, which led to the arch apprenticeship job the next year, Ford larboard his beasts to be cared for by a acquaintance who agreed to reside on the farm.
As the years passed, Ford said it became added difficult to leave the farm. It’s one acumen he fabricated an unusual, if not desperate, offer.
In November 1998, Ford saw an opening. Clemson was 2-8 branch into the division afterpiece if drillmaster Tommy West was fired. Max Lennon, the ex-Clemson admiral and Ford nemesis, was gone. Ford consulted some abutting accompany and acted. He about bidding absorption in the job and said he’d drillmaster the aggregation for free.
“For what Clemson had done for me, I would try to acknowledgment the favor and advice them in any way I could advice them. That was my cerebration in that situation,” Ford said.
He never heard from academy officials. Over the years, Ford said, he batten to three schools about the achievability of acceptable their arch football coach. He beneath to go into details, but one bearings is undeniable.
In November 2004, he got a alarm from Terry Holland, afresh contest administrator at East Carolina. Holland and Ford had been accompany for added than two decades, but this was about business. Holland asked Ford if he’d accede apprenticeship the Pirates.
The academy had just affected the abandonment of John Thompson, who won three amateur in two seasons. Thompson would abide for the season’s final two games, but Holland capital to get started with the seek for a new coach. So began talks with Ford.
“We anticipation it was a continued shot, but we anticipation it was at atomic account exploring,” Holland told USA TODAY Sports. “He seemed to fit East Carolina in agreement of the affectionate of academy we are and the affectionate of football affairs we capital as well.”
But did a acknowledgment to the academy football activity fit Ford?
Deborah Ford appropriate the ache of getting a coach’s wife — decidedly the wife of a drillmaster accustomed to win championships and one who had arguable with NCAA investigations — became intolerable. Too abundant pressure. Too little privacy. And Danny Ford said demography a arch apprenticeship job afterwards the abutment of his wife would accept been untenable.
“That was an issue,” Holland said of Ford’s ancestors concerns.
While Deborah can’t anamnesis the timing, she said she did ability a point if she accurate her husband’s acknowledgment to coaching.
Holland said that afterwards two weeks he affected Ford wasn’t interested. And, of course, that’s if he got a alarm from Ford, who was cogent austere interest. But a few canicule earlier, Holland agilely offered the job to Skip Holtz, son of allegorical drillmaster Lou Holtz, afterwards giving up on Ford.
“We alleged Danny and talked to him a continued time afore we anytime even started talking to Skip,” Holland said. “But he just wasn’t absolutely accommodating to accomplish himself so we started searching at added association and interviewed Skip and absolutely admired him and acquainted like he could do the job here.”
Holtz accustomed the job and guided East Carolina two Conference USA titles, four basin amateur and a 38-27 almanac in 5 seasons afore he larboard for South Florida.
“It angry out well,” Holland said. “But I still consistently admiration what would’ve happened if Danny had” taken the job.
In a quiet moment on his farm, Ford said, “I’ve abstruse there are added things in activity than getting a football coach, and a lot of humans never apprentice that.”
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