The craziest aspect to entertain of the rise to Clemson football is not that it has happened but that Dabo Swinney changed recruiting in general and is changing the sport for the better.
If you have been around college football long enough, you know that for the entire existence of the sport it was led by men that had no interest in what their players were doing off the field and only developed them around football. There was no family atmosphere and certainly no such thing as servant leadership.
Watch the movie Junction Boys and get an idea of how hard nose coaches were.