On August 30, 2008, exactly ten years ago, Tommy Bowden’s tenure as the head football coach at Clemson University began to end.
The day was supposed to go differently. At 8 p.m., Bowden’s Clemson Tigers were scheduled to return to national prominence, after spending the better part of two decades wandering the college football wilderness. The site of the supposed return was the Georgia Dome, the venue for the inaugural Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, where the #9 Tigers would face Nick Saban’s #24 Alabama Crimson Tide. The game would be televised on ABC. It would be the jewel of the opening weekend, the thought went.