Sept. 22, 2009

• 2009 ACC Football Championship Game Legends Class
• Click here to read about the other 2009 ACC Football Legends

Mention the name of former Clemson head football coach Danny Ford in Tiger country and you're likely to hear him described as intense, passionate, loyal and tough. Those qualities and many more are what made Ford and the teams he coached successful both on and off the field.

Ford is one of this year's Dr Pepper Atlantic Coast Conference Football Championship Game Legends who will be honored at this year's ACC Football Championship Game weekend. The Legends will appear at the ACC Coaches and Awards Luncheon at noon on Friday, Dec. 4, and will be honored at the "ACC Night of Legends" held at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay on Friday evening. They will also be recognized during pre-game ceremonies at Raymond James Stadium for the 5th Annual Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship, which kicks off at 8 p.m., Dec. 5 on ESPN.

Growing up in Gadsden, Ala., sports were always a big part of Ford's life. After a standout career at Gadsden High School, Ford began his collegiate career at the University of Alabama as a two-sport athlete - playing basketball and football. By his sophomore year, Ford chose to concentrate on football and earned All-SEC honors playing under his coaching mentor Paul "Bear" Bryant.

When Ford's playing days were over, Pat Dye, a then-assistant coach at Alabama, encouraged him to get into coaching by becoming a graduate assistant for the Crimson Tide. Ford would go on to work as an assistant for nine years at Virginia Tech and Clemson before getting a chance to run his own program. Opportunity knocked when then-Clemson head coach Charley Pell announced that he was leaving the Tigers to take a job at the University of Florida near the end of the 1978 season. The announcement came just days before Clemson was set to take on Ohio State in the Gator Bowl.

In his coaching debut on Dec. 29, 1978 Ford led the Tigers to a stunning 17-15 win over legendary Buckeyes' coach Woody Hayes in the final game of his career. At 30 years old, Ford was the nation's youngest head football coach at the time.

"Really they took a heck of chance on a young guy that had never been a head coach before," Ford said.

Ford was a strong disciplinarian with a work ethic second to none, and he immediately began to instill that in his team. While his players knew that having a great game plan was important, there was no replacement for hard work. Ford's Tigers quickly gained a reputation as a tough football team that was very physical and fundamentally sound.

"That's something that he preached on a regular basis that it's no different in life. You have got to know who you are. You don't need to be having an identity crisis if you're going to be successful in life," said Jeff Davis a captain on the 1981 team. "You need to know who you are and you need to stick with what works. Coach Ford played a big part in cultivating those characteristics in our lives."

In his first full season as head coach, Ford led Clemson to a 7-4 mark and thought that things were going pretty well, but after a 6-5 campaign in his second year the Clemson faithful began to worry.

"The next year we were 6-5 and everybody was complaining, so that's when we started running into some problems of trying to rebuild a program," Ford said. "The next year [1981] we had a lot of guys that dedicated themselves, but we started off with just being a very average football team."

That 1981 team turned out to be anything but average. By the end of the season the Tigers were the only undefeated team in the nation. Clemson finished the year at 12-0 after defeating Nebraska 22-15 in the Orange Bowl and secured the first National Championship in school history in any sport. The win earned Ford National Coach-of-the-Year honors, while making him the youngest head football coach to ever win a national title at 33 years old - a record that still stands today.

Davis said he feels that the success of the '81 squad was due in large part to Ford stressing the importance of putting the team first, and that no man was bigger than the team.

"He would never treat any one person on the team special, every player had to earn his way," Davis said.

Clemson football would go on to become one of the most successful football programs in the ACC as well as the nation during Ford's 11 years as head coach where he compiled a 96-29-4 record. Ford's 96 wins rank fourth all-time among ACC coaches behind only FSU's Bobby Bowden, UVa's George Welsh and Bill Dooley who coached at North Carolina and Wake Forest. His .760 winning percentage is the third best in ACC history behind only current coaces Bowden and Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer. Ford was successful in the postseason as well, leading the Tigers to six bowl victories while capturing five ACC crowns during his tenure - including three straight from 1986 through 1988.

"We had a good staff and good players, and they got used to winning. I think when you feel like you can win, you have good players, and people have confidence that they are good, it's awful hard to beat a football team like that," Ford said.

Ford is also quick to credit the Clemson students and Tiger faithful for making the team such a success.

"We had great, great fan support. In the state of South Carolina we didn't have a pro team so we didn't have to fight that, we just had this great college atmosphere of tailgating and coming to ballgames," Ford said. "I remember stories of people living in Myrtle Beach who would leave at five in the morning and get up here and watch the ballgame, drive back home and teach Sunday school the next day with about two hours of sleep. We just had dedicated fans and our students were great too."

After leaving Clemson, Ford went on to coach at Arkansas before returning to his home in Pendleton, S.C. to retire from coaching. Now he spends most of his days on his farm tending to cattle, farming wheat and fishing in his pond for crappie and bass.

"As long as you don't have trouble on the farm you always have something to do. There's always a fence to fix or some cattle to doctor, I enjoy that," Ford said. "It's a great place to live. You're not far from the mountains, you're not far from the beach, you have great weather and the chance to see major college football eight miles from my house."

When Dabo Swinney was named head coach at Clemson he continued the tradition of former Alabama players hired to take over the Tiger program - a list that includes Ford, Pell and Clemson coaching legend, Frank Howard.

"It's a very unique thing, I just hope I can have the same success that those other Alabama guys had," Swinney said. "There have been a lot of good Alabama guys that have come through here, and for whatever reason it worked out well for most of them. I hope I can fill those same shoes."

In 1999 Ford was inducted into the Clemson Hall of Fame and the Ring of Honor at Memorial Stadium. Still a popular figure in the Clemson community, Ford attends many Tiger home games and stays involved with the football program. Swinney said that this off-season Ford participated in camps, attended a former player barbeque and spoke at some of his clinics.

"Coach Ford is the one guy who led the team to a national championship and he's very well respected around here," Swinney said. "He certainly casts a big shadow here at Clemson."