No More "Bring Back Danny Ford" at Clemson

With Clemson’s current HFC having become a one-name national icon – “Dabo” – the gang down at The Esso Club and Dan’s Sandwich Shop have finally put away those BRING BACK DANNY FORD yard signs they used to set out every few years around “The Upstate”.

It has only taken 25 years or so to reach that point.

Here’s a great story about…. Whatever Happened To Danny Ford .

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How Danny Ford went from Clemson legend to out of college football

Josh Peter, USA TODAY Sports 12:16 p.m. EST December 4, 2015

CENTRAL, S.C. — Dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and a camouflage baseball cap, Danny Ford drove an all-terrain vehicle from behind his house toward a herd of cows.

They greeted the 67-year-old former Clemson football coach with a chorus of moos.

“They’re hungry,” Ford said with a drawl as thick as his protruding belly, and he might as well have been appraising not just the cows but the ravenous Tigers — Clemson Tigers, that is.

Ford whet their collective appetite 34 years ago when he led Clemson to its first and only national championship. Now, with Clemson ranked No. 1 in the polls for the first time since Ford’s team won the 1981 national title, the coach remains a symbol of glory and something of a mystery.

At 33, he became the youngest football coach to win a national championship. At 50, he was out of football.

On most college football Saturdays over the last 17 years, Ford has been on his 174-acre farm that is home to about 140 cows, 10 horses and three dogs. “I don’t know how many cats, possum, rabbits, squirrel and deer,” he said, “but we got some of them, too.”

On some Saturdays, Ford listens to Clemson games on the radio while on his all-terrain vehicle, Bobcat loader or tractor. This year, with Clemson at 12-0 and poised for a spot in the College Football Playoff with a win Saturday vs. North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, Ford’s mind has wandered during the games from life on the farm to life on the sidelines.

“You naturally think, ‘What if I was there,’ ” Ford told USA TODAY Sports. “You’re always thinking if you’re going to get back in, whether you do or you don’t. You always wonder what it would be like.

“Would I have liked to have coached another 10 years? Sure. Another 20? Sure, if we’d still be winning.”