Voices from the past

I'm sure you'll agree it's been a great summer for content at Tigerillustrated.com.

The highlight, undoubtedly, was Cris' series featuring interviews with all the living former football coaches.

We also were able to consult 24 former players from different eras to get their take on the current state of Clemson's football program. A big part of my job is to analyze and offer opinion, but this series proved that you can get great stuff by asking an open-ended question, getting the heck out of the way and giving your readers the unvarnished, word-for-word opinions from a multitude of subjects.

A no-spin zone, if you will.

Here's the revelation I took from the series: These players' opinions are about as varied as the opinions you'll see from fans who passionately follow their program. It's refreshing in a way.

The last two interviews, with Vance Hammond and Keith Jennings, were probably the perfect way to close the series. Because here you have two guys who played in the same glorified era, on the same team, and yet their opinions contrast in a fairly profound way.

Yeah, both Hammond and Jennings would like to see an element at practice that they suspect has been missing all these years. They believe they were punished during practices that followed losses, and the punitive nature of those situations under Danny Ford made them edgy and determined not to lose again.

But beyond that, there are strong differences between Hammond's and Jennings' takes. Hammond seems far from sold on the direction of the program. He's baffled at the underachievement that's occurred in the last 20 years, and particularly the last six years. He thinks it's only a matter of time before Florida State rebounds and slams the door shut in the Atlantic Division.

Jennings is abundantly optimistic about what's unfolding in the football program. He's heartened by the fact that Dabo Swinney has surrounded himself with so many people who have been at programs that have won at a high level. He's mesmerized by the talent that's been accumulated. He seems convinced that this program is on the verge of winning in a very big way.

And there's the beauty of all these opinions: Everyone has different ones, and players from particular eras can't necessarily be pigeon-holed to a specific opinion. You'd think that most guys who played during the glory years under Ford don't like what they've seen recently and wish the Tigers would start following the blueprint that produced a national title and all those ACC titles, and that might be true. But you still have some prominent pieces from that era (Rodney Williams, Keith Jennings) who are not only not discouraged about the direction of the program, but quite encouraged.

It's important to remember that most, if not all, of these former players are detached from the program. They're not over there every day and do not have intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes stuff that's going on.

So for all their experience playing in earlier eras, and for all the contributions that made many of them icons in the eyes of Clemson fans, they are largely uninformed about the inner workings.

Then again, the bet here is that even the folks who are involved would have differing takes on the positives/negatives of the program. If you polled all nine current assistant coaches on the state of things, you'd probably get some diversity of opinion. And you'd definitely get it if you polled current players.

So sports discourse involving passionate people is about like political discourse involving passionate people.

Except sports is actually fun to watch.

LW