The Clemson Dubcast

Tron Foster, 23, had been suffering from cancer for many years and wasn't doing well in recent weeks. He wanted to do something he'd never done before: Attend a Clemson-South Carolina game and watch his beloved Tigers play. Russ Lloyd, an ardent Gamecock fan, heard about Tron's story and hosted Tron and his family at his tailgate in Columbia before the game. Tron also got to visit with Dabo Swinne...

Being a host for Clemson's flagship radio station is fine and dandy when the Tigers are winning championships. But what about when they're cratering to 1-3 and 3-5 records in a season that was supposed to usher them back to the rare air of the elite? That's a much tougher and more awkward line to navigate, as William Qualkinbush shares in a conversation with The Dubcast. Qualkinbush and other host...

Clemson graduate Mark Packer returned to his alma mater last week to speak to the Fort Hill Clemson Club and to dot the "i" on the field before the Tigers' victory over Florida State. Packer has been enjoying retirement since stepping away from the ACC Network this past summer. He said working for ESPN the previous three years was highly frustrating in part because he didn't have total control ove...

Tim Bourret is a Clemson icon and will be inducted into the school's athletics Hall of Fame on Friday night. Bourret also was a member of Dabo Swinney's inner circle when Swinney was ascending from interim coach to permanent coach to Hall of Fame coach. Swinney said Bourret has always provided him valuable counsel. "He tells the truth to me. He's tough and firm when he needs to be." Bourret joins...

Brett McMurphy spent many years in the newspaper business, and before the Internet took hold his deadlines were once a day. Now there's a deadline every minute when your job is breaking news in the ultra-competitive world of national college football media. One summer a few years ago, there was supposedly nothing going on and McMurphy thought he scheduled a good time to play golf at the iconic Peb...

Once upon a time, Pete Nakos wrote about Clemson for On3 when the network first began covering the Tigers. Nakos has risen to the top tier of breaking-news coverage in college football, using his work ethic and vast array of connections to be on top of just about all the developments during a chaotic time in college athletics. Nakos lives in the Nashville area and commutes to the On3 offices every...

After 17 years at ESPN, Chris Low made the move to On3 this summer. Low is known for his relationships with high-profile college football coaches, and he has spent the early stages of his time at On3 traveling for in-depth sit-downs with them as he tries to give readers behind-the-scenes stories and insight they can't get anywhere else. Last week Low was at Oregon sitting down with Dan Lanning two...

Darien Rencher's last act as a Clemson football player was being a part of a team that had a dramatic turnaround in 2021 after a 4-3 start. That team closed by winning six consecutive games, including a 30-0 suffocation of South Carolina and a victory over Brock Purdy's Iowa State team in the Cheez-It Bowl. At that time, 10-3 felt like a jarring low point. Four years later the Tigers are 1-3 and D...

What's wrong with Clemson? What's wrong with Dabo Swinney? What's wrong with Cade Klubnik? What was wrong with the widely popular notion that this team could be the best in the nation? Why are the Tigers 1-2, and what are the reasons fans can be hopeful of a turnaround? Longtime radio voice Mickey Plyler joins The Dubcast to explore it all, and much more.  

What in the world is going on with Clemson? Eric Mac Lain and Ellis Johnson have some thoughts. Mac Lain, who played offensive line for Dabo Swinney, is quite critical of the offensive line play he's seen thus far. He's also not sure what to make of Cade Klubnik's jittery presence over the first two games. Johnson, a former assistant at both South Carolina and Clemson, now lives in Clemson so he c...

Every summer, Tigerillustrated.com sits down with Brad Brownell for a lengthy interview in his office. This year's interview came in early July when Brownell was still in the formative stages of assimilating an almost entirely new roster after significant attrition from last year's team that went 18-2 in the ACC. The Q&A originally appeared as a multi-part series at Tigerillustrated.com. This...

Dave Clawson and Dabo Swinney became good friends over the course of Clawson's 11 seasons as head coach at Wake Forest. Clawson came agonizingly close to beating Clemson but never did, and he says he's particularly haunted by the 2022 game the Tigers won 51-45 in double overtime on the Deacons' home field. Clawson has great respect for not just the program and culture Swinney has built, but for th...

Matt Luke and Nick Eason recently sat down for lengthy interviews to preview the 2025 season. This is the uncut audio from those sessions. Luke is entering his second year as Clemson's offensive line coach after two years away from the game. He says there's no other job at any other school that would have pulled him away from his sabbatical. Eason, entering his fourth season at his alma mater, has...

Garrett Riley and Tyler Grisham recently sat down for lengthy interviews to preview the 2025 season. We present the uncut audio from both sessions. Riley is entering his third year as Clemson's offensive coordinator after Dabo Swinney lured him from TCU following the Horned Frogs' run to the national championship game. Grisham, a Clemson grad, has arguably the top receiving corps in college footba...

Tom Allen and Ben Boulware recently participated in media interviews in advance of the 2025 season. We present the uncut audio from both of their interviews. Dabo Swinney pulled off a coup in landing Allen after the firing of Wes Goodwin, who lasted three years as the Tigers' defensive coordinator. Boulware, who is in charge of the linebackers, spent the previous year in a support-staff role for h...

What does it do to the mind of an 18-year-old college athlete to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account? "I pray for them all the time," Tremayne Anchrum said. "Because I had a great upbringing. I had great parents. I had a great support system. And you know what? I still did a lot of stupid things. So I can't really imagine people with no support system and who have bad influen...

In 2019, Marcus Lattimore was inducted into the University of South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame and it looked like one of the happiest moments of his life. Instead, he was at a major life crossroads as he battled the trauma from trying to figure out his identity away from football. Soon thereafter, Lattimore and his wife moved to Oregon and he basically scrubbed every trace of football from his...

Brian Murphy is based in Raleigh and his title is Sports Investigative Reporter for WRAL TV. Of late there's been a lot to investigate at North Carolina's football program as Bill Belichick operates in a shroud of secrecy so thick that his players didn't have jersey numbers during the Tar Heels' recent spring game. In addition, Belichick's 24-year-old girlfriend has taken on a strange role within...

Joey Batson, Clemson's longtime and iconic strength and conditioning coach, is planning for 2025 to be his final season with the Tigers. In the midst of this news broken today by Tigerillustrated.com, we revisit a 2021 interview we conducted with Batson in his office just months after he underwent open-heart surgery. "Being a coach all these years, you want to push," Batson said then. "You just wa...

At the lowest point of his depression, Ricky Sapp was a recluse who wouldn't even answer phone calls from his mother, father or close friend Da'Quan Bowers. He couldn't sleep and was so itchy that he thought he had bed bugs. Only after he sought help did he learn that there were no bed bugs, but a monster of a battle as he tried to figure out who he was after his football career ended. Sapp found...

It didn't take long for Viktor Lakhin to become a favorite among Clemson basketball fans after he transferred to the Tigers from Cincinnati. When he was making major contributions to triumphs over Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky, Lakhin was known as the fun-loving Russian. Dabo Swinney even took a liking to him, coining the "Lakhinness Monster" nickname late in the season when Clemson was amassi...

Former Clemson star Patrick Sapp watched a large number of the recent spring practices for the Tigers. Sapp is closer to the team than usual because his son Josh plays tight end for Clemson. Sapp gives his extended thoughts and insights on what he observed, and where he thinks the Tigers are headed in Year 17 under Dabo Swinney. Last August, Sapp was bullish on the idea that Cade Klubnik and the o...

Bobby Couch had a big job at Clemson when he was a major fundraiser for IPTAY. But that's not what Dan Radakovich was angry about when he called Couch to his office one day a decade or so ago. Radakovich wanted to talk to Couch about his other, more unofficial job: Commissioner of the Noon Time Basketball Association. The NTBA, played on weekdays, was largely athletics department staffers and pers...

Tom Allen has been a breath of fresh air around Clemson's football program as he injects authority and energy that were lacking before Dabo Swinney hired him from Penn State. He's already gone back and watched plenty of film from last year, including of the first two practices. He didn't like what he saw. Allen goes in-depth on his task at his new job and how it differs from the objective he had a...

Jock McKissic's new book looks like it could've been written by Dabo Swinney. That's how much impact McKissic's former coach has had on his life, from his career as a Clemson defensive lineman from 2005 to 2008, all the way to this day. In 50 Principles to Thrive in Life From Half-Full to Overflowing, McKissic explores themes such as The Coffee Bean Principle, why comfort is your greatest enemy, a...