Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was not always one of the highest-paid coaches in college football history.
In fact, in this episode of “In His Own Words”, Swinney recalls his job as a gutter cleaner in Pelham, Alabama, and how it molded him into the person he is today.
“What did I learn cleaning gutters? Man, I’m the best gutter cleaner out there. I started cleaning gutters when I was 14, me and Les Daniels, my buddy. We couldn’t drive at the time so we’d carry a ladder and a blower and a rake, knock on people’s doors, over — all the big houses were in a place called River Chase and we’d just knock on people’s doors and clean their gutters and got real good at it. I was still cleaning gutters. In fact, the week before I got — a couple weeks before I got hired by Coach Stallings full-time, because we didn’t get to go to a bowl in ’95 so I was home all Christmas and I had just finished my MBA and I was cleaning gutters. It’s just what I needed to do. It was a great way to go make some money. You know, it was good.
“And then after all — several years I didn’t have to knock on many doors anymore because people just expected me to show up, and I did. And then eventually whoever I could get to go with me, I would go, and then eventually my older brother and I would do it together. It was a lot of — it was good times, man, a lot of fun. I still, even now to this day, I ride around and look at people’s gutters, man, I should go knock on their door and clean it up.”
