Brandon Maye on Swinney, All In and the 'Freaking Playbook'

In an interview with AllClemson.com, former Clemson linebacker Brandon Maye talked about first impressions of head coach Dabo Swinney and the beginnings of "All In."

The infamous "All In" mantra at Clemson began the first time now-head coach Dabo Swinney addressed his new team as interim head coach in 2008, and it all started with one question.

Are you going to be all in, or are you going to be all out?

The way Swinney carried himself in his first players' meeting was as if, "He had been preparing for the moment his entire life," said former Clemson linebacker Brandon Maye in an interview with AllClemson.com. "It was as if he had a playbook on how to be a first-time head coach."

Maye had just gotten into a scuffle in practice a week prior with, at the time, Clemson's wide receivers coach Swinney. Maye recollected 'torching' the young assistant's pass-catchers a week before the coaching change, inciting a minor scuffle, and wasn't the only one of the Tigers' athletes to tilt their head at the initial announcement of former coach Tommy Bowden's replacement.

"(After Wake Forest), they call the player's only meeting. Get in there, you got Terry Don Phillips standing on the stage, and he's given us news that coach Bowden has been fired, and guess what guys, your new interim coach is your wide receiver coach, Coach Dabo Swinney," Maye said.

He couldn't believe the news at first, but the demeanor of coach Swinney on the podium changed the culture of the program, seemingly 'overnight,' as everyone enveloped the "All In" culture.

"I look around, and I'm like, what the freak?" Maye said. "Coach Swinney, me and him were in an argument last week, I was on the scout team tearing every freaking receiver he had up, and I was cussing and everything, right, and now all of a sudden he's my freakin interim head coach?

"So instantly this guy gets up on the stage, man. He tells everybody, this is the moment I've been waiting for, you know, this is my chance, this is my opportunity, and he said these words: I need you to go all in. He said if you can't be all in, then you got to be all out. So I want everyone who wants to be all in to stay seated, and everybody who wants to be all out, you can properly leave."

A phrase that still is an integral part of the Clemson foundation today, Maye recalled every single player remaining seated afterward. Swinney knew what he wanted to be as a head coach and didn't beat around the bush, which immediately won the small number of skeptics over.

"Guys looked around, you know guys thinking to themselves like, come on man, it's a wide receiver coach that's talking to us like this," Maye said. "But nobody got up, nobody left. Everybody bought into the system. They bought into what he was trying to preach, and it's so crazy because that was a process that still had to fall in place. 

"He instantly integrated the Swinney; I don't know what it was, dude, it was like the Swinney effect. We just started doing things differently. The way we sit in the meetings. Everything just changed. Practices changed. The energy, just the whole thing, and it's like this dude was waiting for his opportunity, and he just seized the moment. it's like he had a freaking playbook of "If I Was a Head Coach." Like a dream book of, if I was a head coach, this is what I would do. He threw it on the table that (first) day and just got started. Just got going and didn't slow down."

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