Clemson Is Back On the ROY Bus
CLEMSON—What did head coach Dabo Swinney do during the second-ranked Clemson Tigers (5-0, 3-0 ACC) bye week? He watched some football and went out to his shed and polished off the ROY Bus.
The Rest of Y'all bus made an appearance last season when Swinney made one of his statements that had the nation talking when he said that even with his team’s success, it was still Alabama and the “rest of y’all.”
“The reality of it is, back when I was a player, we kind of had the big-time bus and then the R.O.Y. bus – the Rest of Y’all. It is kind of Alabama and the rest of Y’all,” Swinney said. “We are just kind of glad to be on the R.O.Y bus right now and to still have a chance. But it really does not matter. It is exciting to know that we are getting into November and we are still a team that is in the middle of the hunt.
“The race is not over. You have to keep running the race with purpose and focus and great attention to the task at hand and just take them one at a time. Hopefully, when it is all said and done and Y’all get to about that fifth or however many shows that Y’all do, we are still in there, that would be awesome. For us, we want to win our division first. That is what we want to do.”
However, after ending last season with a 28-point win over the Tide in the national championship game and then starting the season ranked No.1, one might have wondered how long, if at all, it would be before the Tigers could jump back on the ROY Bus.
The answer six weeks. Following the Tigers' one-point win over the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Tigers fell from No.1 to No.2 in the polls and spent the bye week hearing about everything that was wrong with the Tigers, Swinney decided it was time to head out to the shed and polish off the old bus for another ride.
"We have 120 young people who have family, friends, social media, so that's part of it," Swinney said. "I'm glad that we have people who have an opinion on Clemson. That means we matter. Our program matters. It's good that people are talking about Clemson, good or bad.
"I went back to the shed this past week, took the tarp off the ROY bus, got on the ROY bus, gave it an oil change, went down to the five-dollar oil change, fluffed up the seats a little bit and now we're back on the Roy bus. Here we go."
The Tigers may be on the ROY Bus, but Swinney is not about to worry about what the outside thinks because that can be very dangerous.
"If you try to live your life from the outside in - and a lot of people do that - if you're affected by the outside, you won't be great," Swinney said. "You have to focus on things you control. When you focus on things you can't control, those things control you. I have no control over what people write. If I worry about that, I get distracted. You have to think the right way. When you're dealing with young people, that's important.
"Our program blossomed from the inside out, not from the outside-in. When I got the job, I wrote down the things we had never done and all the things people said we couldn't do. We didn't get distracted by things that didn't matter. Most people don't really know or understand anyway, so it doesn't matter."
