Phillips Pretty Good Judge of Coaches, Clemson also Copies Cyclones
STILLWATER -- Sometimes I think that Terry Don Phillips is a forgotten name in Oklahoma State athletics history. There is no doubt with all the shiny additions to the Oklahoma State campus under the leadership of former golf coach Mike Holder and with the generous donations led and dominated by the late T. Boone Pickens that Phillips and his orange sports coat out there first, catching and then later, after the Athletic Center and Gallagher-Iba Arena project was completed, releasing the Oklahoma State spirit and tradition is lost. Two decades have passed since then and Phillips left Stillwater and Oklahoma State back in 2002 for a similar shade of orange and purple at Clemson. So, recently when Clemson is playing for the football national championship Phillips gets some credit. With Tiger fans he should get a lot of credit.
Phillips, who as a senior associate athletic director at Arkansas oversaw the Bud Walton Arena project among others, got Oklahoma State going the right direction in boosting facilities. That effort has not stopped with Boone Pickens Stadium and the West End Zone, the Sherman Smith Center, a new track facility, the Greenwood Tennis Center, the Neal Patterson Soccer Stadium, and soon the open O'Brate Stadium for baseball.
While Oklahoma State fans and supporters listened on the facility front, they did not trust the former Arkansas defensive lineman that actually coached as an assistant at Virginia Tech, to identify a new football coach when he fired Pat Jones.
Phillips was all set to hire Arkansas defensive coordinator Joe Kines and the immediate and nearly total revolt of Oklahoma State fans caused one of the greatest pause that I've ever witnessed by an athletics administrator. Kines was kicked to the curb disappointing Phillips. However, not wanting to start his relationship with the rank and file in his new job on the wrong side, Phillips hired Colorado assistant and ace recruiter Bob Simmons instead.
It would not be Phillips' best hire for a football coach, at Oklahoma State or later at Clemson. However, everything in sports is a progression and leads to something else. Simmons did upgrade Oklahoma State recruiting and he did bring in Les Miles as his first offensive coordinator. Miles' showing great foresight left after a couple of seasons for an assistant job with the Dallas Cowboys and was in position to be Phillips' second football hire in Stillwater. He also gets credit for insisting that Miles hire Mike Gundy as his assistant head coach and groom him for the job he holds today and has for the past 15 seasons.
"People don't know how close Mike was to getting that job when I hired Les," Phillips said a couple of years ago in a radio interview with Triple Play Sports Radio. "Mike was impressive and he had enthusiasm and confidence. I knew Les wasn't going to stay forever and that Mike was the future."
Later when Les Miles left for LSU after the 2004 Alamo Bowl, then athletic director Harry Birdwell, with the blessing of future athletic director Mike Holder and his golden donor in Pickens, hired Gundy.
"I remember watching Mike play quarterback when he was in school and he had that it factor," Holder said around that time.
All that is well and good, but the best head coaching hire in college football that Phillips ever made wasn't in Stillwater. The same man that once tried to hire Joe Kines at Oklahoma State was about to make history at Clemson. By the way, Gundy and Oklahoma State beat Kines when he was interim head coach at Alabama back in the 2006 Independence Bowl.
Phillips watched in 2008 as a Clemson team expected to be pretty good in the ACC floundered to a 3-3 start. Phillips, who had really lost confidence in head coach Tommy Bowden before that season forced Bowden to resign in mid-season. Now, Phillips needed an interim head coach and he relied on his practice observations rather than the conventional wisdom on looking for the veteran coach and the coordinator he felt was most ready.
He promoted a former walk-on receiver from Alabama that just two years previous had been working in commercial real estate development after being on a staff at Bama that was fired. Dabo Swinney had never been a coordinator and was really inexperienced to even be the interim head coach.
“I'd go out on the practice field and walk around and watch all the coaches," Phillips told me. "Every time I go over to the receivers I'm seeing Dabo and he's pouring everything he's got into coaching these kids, I mean, he's got fire in his britches. He's tough on ‘em, jumping on a kid one minute and then has his arm around him the next. You could see he connected with his players."
In another interview with a reporter, Phillips said he would be in the football offices and would see all the players, not just the receivers would migrate to Swinney They wanted to be around him. He had some special qualities that you don't find in every coach.
Back before the 2016 National Championship Game, Swinney remembered the exchange when Phillips told him he was making him the interim head coach of the Tigers.
“I went into his office really expecting for him to just say, ‘Hey, do the best you can do and try to get the next guy to keep you or whatever,'” said Swinney of that 2008 conversation. “But his message to me was, ‘Hey, look, I've watched you for 5 1/2 years, and I think you're ready for this job. I've seen the way you relate to your players and how they perform and respect you. I'd love to see you get the job, but you're going to have to win some games.”
Swinney did. It wasn't awesome. The Tigers lost to Georgia Tech 21-17 in Swinney's first game, but then won four of the final five regular season games beating Boston College, Duke, Virginia, and rival South Carolina. They lost to 24th-ranked Florida State and earned a trip to the Gator Bowl.
Phillips went with his gut and promoted Swinney to full-time head coach. Phillips retired in 2012, but he does have national championship rings from 2016 and 2018. If Swinney and Clemson find a way to upset LSU and win again on Monday then Phillips will get another ring.
It turns out the man that Oklahoma State didn't trust to hire his first choice as Cowboys football coach in 1995 is pretty good at hiring coaches.
Cyclones Three-Man Front Part of Clemson Success this Season
This season in the Big 12, really the past two seasons in Big 12 football all defensive coordinators have studied Iowa State's defense and the three-man front instituted by defensive coordinator Jon Heacock. At Baylor they have pretty much copied it lock, stock , and barrel and with some good talent have even beaten Iowa State with their own scheme. Oklahoma State and coordinator Jim Knowles have used it and mixed it with Knowles base 4-2-5 scheme and improved.
This story is detailed quite well in a story from The Athletic.
Maybe the greatest form of flattery, imitation, was greater when CFP finalist and defending national champion Clemson came to Ames, Iowa last April to study Heacock's rush three, drop eight, and blitz from anywhere concept. In fact, when Ohio State jumped out to a lead and seemed to be able to move the ball at will early in the Dec. 28 CFP semifinal then Clemson put the Iowa State scheme to work.
“We had to do something different,” Clemson safeties coach Mickey Conn said, “because they were going up and down the field on what we were trying to do otherwise.”
Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables is a product of the Big Eight/Big 12 having played at Kansas State, coached there and at Oklahoma.
“They’re doing more with less as well as anybody,” Venables said in October of the Cyclones defense and scheme. “I grew up in a program at Kansas State that we took a pride in exactly that. So I have tremendous respect for the success level that they’ve had, knowing the kind of precision and skill they see week in and week out. They’re doing something right.”
