Tony Eason Podcasts

The full, uncut audio from recent press-conference interviews with first-year offensive coordinator Garrett Riley, second-year defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin, and second-year offensive line coach Thomas Austin.By Larry Williams

One of Grace Raynor's first experiences covering Clemson was for a football game some folks might remember -- in Tampa, featuring the Tigers and Crimson Tide playing for the national championship. Raynor still shudders at her harrowing experience writing on a tight deadline late that night for The Post and Courier newspaper. It was such a traumatic…

Grayson Mann is a rising senior at Clemson and an aspiring sports journalist. In addition to working for Tigerillustrated.com as an intern, Mann has his own podcast on which he's interviewed various Clemson football and basketball players. On this episode, Clemson Dubcast host Larry Williams drops by Mann's podcast and we talk what it's like for a …

The full audio of recent press conferences featuring Clemson defensive tackles coach Nick Eason, running backs coach C.J. Spiller and receivers coach Tyler Grisham. Eason discusses the motivations behind his substantial weight loss since last September, plus the sensation created by freshman tackle Peter Woods. Spiller and Grisham discuss the adjus…

Roy Philpott has been an ESPN play-by-play announcer for a decade, and occasionally his job will bring him back to the place he went to school and worked. He was back at his alma mater for the recent Clemson spring game, standing on the field and following a mic'd-up Dabo Swinney. Philpott was a publisher at Scout.com and covered Clemson on a daily…

Former Clemson football player Richard Yeargin has found his calling after years of soul-searching and trying to reconcile life without football. Yeargin was involved in a horrible car accident in Greenville in 2017, just a few months after he and the Tigers were atop the mountain in Tampa celebrating Clemson's first national title since 1981. He p…

Kyle Richardson is a "pig in mud" as he transitions to the offense of Garrett Riley, as both have roots in the Air Raid offensive system. Richardson acknowledges that the 2022 season, his first as an on-the-field coach at Clemson, was difficult because it was his first time coaching tight ends. Richardson believes his top player, Jake Briningstool,…

Patrick Sapp joins the podcast to talk a multitude of topics including the mental health of athletes and how it's much different nowadays than when he played at Clemson in the 1990s. Sapp shares that he almost joined Dabo Swinney's staff when Swinney took over as head coach in 2008. At the time, Swinney wanted Sapp to be an offensive analyst and Le…

Donald Trump Montage | A Story of Fact Not Fiction - Part 2 A audio news montage of the twice impeached & presently indicted former United States President, Donald John Trump [Part 2} Similar to the behavior of a child, anyone who speaks "the truth" /or/ not in the best light of the former U.S. President is vilified, ostracized, and nicknamed by hi…

In January of 2012, Dan Scott finished up his daily radio show on WCCP-FM and was called into his boss' office. He was abruptly fired, immediately severing the high profile Scott enjoyed on the radio airwaves for more than a decade as he also become a prominent radio voice of Clemson's baseball team. As Scott reveals, his life was already close to …

After a life in Charleston that included 20 years working with John Kresse and Bobby Cremins at College of Charleston, Tony Ciuffo and his wife were looking to retire somewhere. They chose Clemson, where Ciuffo is now working in a broadcasting role with various Tigers sports. Ciuffo's son Nick was once an elite high school baseball player who went …

Three days ago, Graham Neff sat down with reporters and put his full support behind Brad Brownell while declaring Brownell will be back for a 14th season. That stance is now the target of criticism after Clemson's embarrassing loss to Morehead State in the first round of the NIT. With many wondering whether Neff might walk back some of his comments…

An audio news montage of the behavior & actions of the former United States President, Donald John Trump. Unempathetic. Hostile. Egocentric Manipulative. Impulsive. Seditious. Misogyny. Racist. DSM-5 Similar to the behavior of a child, anyone who speaks "the truth" /or/ not in the best light of the former U.S. President is vilified, ostracized, and…

In late December, we had a lengthy interview with the father of Cade Klubnik for more background on Cade's upbringing, his extraordinary competitiveness, and his love of Clemson. Tod Klubnik and his wife Kim are frequent visitors to Clemson as they travel from Austin across the country in the RV purchased after Tod's retirement. Tod shares what it …

Jack Leggett will be back in Doug Kingsmore Stadium tonight, back facing bitter rival South Carolina in a three-game weekend series. Leggett is asked what he'd say to Gamecocks athletics director Ray Tanner and South Carolina assistant Monte Lee if their paths cross this weekend. "Probably not going to be a lot of conversation," he said. Leggett sa…

By age 22, Nic Brown had achieved rock-music stardom. As the drummer in the band Athenaeum, a group that initially came together for a middle-school dance when Brown was in the eighth grade, he was touring the country and sharing the stage with major acts including the Foo Fighters. From the outside, the trajectory for this pop-rock band seemed lim…

A few weeks before Clemson's 2003 baseball season began, a group of students sat in their apartment and one of the guys was skimming classified ads looking for interesting things for sale. He came across this ad: "Bus. $400 with spare engine." The idea was hatched to buy the bus and turn it into a tailgating machine. Twenty years later, the bus is …

J.C. Harper remembers growing up in Clemson as the son of iconic assistant coach Tom Harper, the architect of the Tigers' rampaging defensive lines in the 1980s. At Daniel High School, J.C. attracted attention from recruiters and Georgia's Vince Dooley began appearing at his games. After committing to the Bulldogs, J.C. braced himself for his fathe…

Ron Green Jr. doesn't need an introduction to Michael Jordan. He covered Jordan as a writer for the student newspaper at North Carolina when Jordan was in Chapel Hill. Green has been around a long time -- long enough to have covered Danny Ford during Clemson's first golden era, to have developed a relationship with Tiger Woods, and to have played g…

Ruffin McNeill is basically like family to Garrett Riley and Lincoln Riley, so with Dabo Swinney's major hire of TCU's former offensive coordinator McNeill had a lot to say about Garrett and his history with him. In the mid-1980s, McNeill got his start in college coaching as a grad assistant for Clemson under Danny Ford. He considers those years tw…

In 1994, Tony Eason realized that there was more to life than: guzzling alcohol, snorting cocaine, ingesting ecstasy, speaking of what others need to work on, and/or bathing in self-pity. Therefore, he put down the cocaine and embarked on a 540-mile, 7-day, bike ride titled California AIDS Ride sponsored by Tangeray #2; created by Dan Pallota & Pal…

Todd Dodge is firmly in the inner circle of Cade Klubnik, and the same is true of Jay Mathews and Christopher Vizzina. Dodge and Mathews were featured prominently in the recent series of articles at Tigerillustrated.com exploring the backgrounds of Clemson's two highly regarded quarterbacks. This podcast presents the raw audio from the interviews o…

Fred Cunningham is an Upstate TV news institution who's been working in South Carolina since 1984, when he left his home state of Indiana and entered a whole new world. His first indoctrination into big-time college football was in Athens when Clemson visited Georgia for a major matchup in 1984. Kevin Butler won the game on a 60-yard field goal, an…

Listen to "Coming Out of The Closet" to hear San Franciscan, Tony Eason's journey from Heterosexuality to Homosexuality & uniting with the Gay / LGBTQIA Community. Many people use the term "coming out" to refer to the process of telling someone else how they identify in terms of their romantic orientation, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Co…

Mickey Plyler visits the podcast to try to make some sense of the current college football world from bowl opt-outs, to the transfer portal, to NIL, and to Clemson's dispiriting performance in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee. What to make of six losses for Clemson the past two years? Does it signal a significant decline worthy of Dabo Swinney mak…

We revisit this interview from November of 2018 with Clemson Hall of Fame member Wayne Coffman, an icon in athletics and academic support. Coffman talks his relationship with Dabo Swinney, the pressures of being an academic adviser for a high-profile sport, growing up in a household of 13 children, and how in the world he got the nickname "Cheech."…

In December of 2021, Tigerillustrated.com reported an in-depth series of articles on freshman quarterback Cade Klubnik as he prepared to arrive at Clemson from his home in Austin, Texas. In this podcast, we revisit the lengthy interviews we conducted then with Klubnik's mother Kim, his pastor Brad Thomas (a Clemson grad) and Klubnik himself. Klubni…

Pete Iacobelli, an institution in South Carolina sports journalism after having spent three decades working for the Associated Press, joins the podcast to reminisce about all the people and stories he's covered. Iacobelli also weighs in on the more memorable public spats between coaches and media, including this week's dust-up between Shane Beamer …

Will Swinney, oldest son of Dabo Swinney, joins the podcast to reflect on life in the real world as he works for a Charlotte-based real-estate development company. This past football season was a strange experience for him as he tried to figure out how to watch games as a spectator. "I realized how little I knew about getting around Memorial Stadiu…

When Jacoby Ford was trying to get back into the NFL, Dabo Swinney wrote personal letters on his behalf to the general managers of every league team. Ford remains close with Swinney and Clemson's football program. In October the former football and track star was inducted into the school's athletics Hall of Fame. Ford, now coaching at his old high …

Nolan Turner, back in Clemson last week during Tampa Bay's open date, was able to take part in the Tigers' tailgating experience for the first time as he went to the Miami game as a fan with James Skalski and others. Turner sits down for an extended interview to talk his remarkable life story, the impact and legacy of his late father Kevin, and wha…

We check in with two writers in Tampa and Norman to get a sense of what things are like in the wake of Jeff Scott's firing, and in the midst of Oklahoma tumbling to a 5-5 record in Year 1 under Brent Venables. Matt Baker covers South Florida for the Tampa Times. Eli Lederman covers Oklahoma for The Tulsa World. Baker reflects on what sealed the fat…

David Hale of ESPN.com rejoins the podcast to discuss the state of college football, and the rather seismic development of both Clemson and Alabama looking as if they'll both be outside of the CFP for the first time in the format's existence. Should Clemson fans be panicking after the humiliation in South Bend? Has complacency creeped into the prog…

In 2012, Tyler Venables and his brother Jake moved to a strange and different new world when they left Norman for Clemson upon their father becoming the Tigers' defensive coordinator. A decade later, Tyler's sisters are going through the exact same experience in Norman after leaving the place they knew as home when Brent Venables went back to Oklah…

Charlie Whitehurst returns to the podcast to share what it was like joining Pat McAfee's live broadcast during the recent Clemson-Florida State game. The highlight of the show for Whitehurst: A show staffer doing dead-on impersonations of Lou Holtz late in the broadcast. Whitehurst gives his perspective on the current situation with DJ Uiagalelei, …

Fourteen years ago, Billy D'Andrea was the man who went to fetch Dabo Swinney from the football offices after Terry Don Phillips and Tommy Bowden parted ways. Swinney, then the receivers coach for Clemson, couldn't understand why he was being summoned to the AD's office. "Did I do something wrong?" he asked D'Andrea. "How long is this going to take…

Longtime Upstate radio host Mickey Plyler joins the podcast to talk about the furor he caused on his show when he poked fun at the Beastie Boys. The discussion then moves to the calamitous situation unfolding at Oklahoma with Brent Venables' team looking back at three consecutive weeks of performances ranging from inconsistent to downright brutally…

What is Dave Doeren really like? Is he as much of a jerk as Clemson fans like to think? Joe Giglio has covered N.C. State since Doeren's arrival in late 2012 and says the coach hasn't been easy to get to know during his long tenure in Raleigh. Giglio, formerly a longtime newspaper guy who is currently a radio talk-show host and contributor to WRAL …

Tye Hill watched every bit of last week's double-overtime victory over Wake Forest. He's a hardcore Clemson fan. And, as a former cornerback in college and in the NFL, he pays close attention to his old position. Hill, who lives in the Atlanta area with his family, joins the podcast and goes deep on proper coverage technique. He was as frustrated a…

Ben Boulware is a business owner. He's married. He's usually asleep by 8 PM. Boulware said even he's surprised that he's all grown up now. He's come a long way from his playing days as a bombastic, freewheeling force of nature for Clemson's football team. "I'm 28," he said. "But I feel like I'm 58." Boulware, co-owner of The Junkyard fitness center…

In addition to his full-time job as a data analyst at Northrup Grumman in Baltimore, Justin Falcinelli is spending considerable time working to affect change as a member of the College Football Players Association. As a member of Clemson's football team from 2015 to 2018, and the starting center on the team that smacked Alabama 44-16 for the nation…

Longtime Upstate radio host Mickey Plyler rejoins the podcast to talk about the quarterback situation at Clemson. With DJ Uiagalelei having shown clear progress and Cade Klubnik having brought a spark in his limited duty, what's the right play right now for Clemson's coaching staff? What are the pros and cons of giving Klubnik more prominent action…

Dustin Fry is in no hurry to get back into college football coaching. He spends most of his time with his wife and two young boys in the hills of North Carolina. He helps out coaching offensive and defensive line at the local high school near Tryon. He is savoring life, and that's hard to do these days in the coaching profession. Fry was on the sup…

Matt Bockhorst joins the podcast to talk life after football, and working just a short walk of the beach at Isle of Palms. Bockhorst also helps dig into the current developments along Clemson's offensive line, which has received a big boost by freshman Blake Miller showing he's worthy of being a starter at right tackle. Bockhorst revisits the exper…

Gary Stokan has been one of the major movers and shakers in college football over the past two-plus decades. As the CEO and president of the Peach Bowl, Stokan has been instrumental in making Atlanta a prominent player in college football. When he was in his 20s, Stokan worked for shoe companies and helped seal sponsorship deals with Magic Johnson …

In a continuation of summer conversations with 30 prominent former players, we catch up with the following: Matt Bockhorst Jim Stuckey Willy Korn Landon Walker Dustin Fry Levon Kirkland Robert Carswell Woody Dantzler Each player is asked the same three basic questions: 1) What are you up to now? 2) What are your thoughts on the state of Clemson's f…

When Tavaghn Monts decided to return to Clemson in 2019 to complete his degree, he discovered he had a 1.63 grade-point average. This was the fallout he wasn't aware of from 2006, when he left school to try out with the Cleveland Browns. He neglected to drop the courses, and that left him with all F's at the end of the semester. After making the Pr…

The raw audio from three assistant coaches' recent visits with the media in advance of the 2022 football season. Thomas Austin is in his first year as Clemson's offensive line coach, replacing longtime coach Robbie Caldwell. He gives insight into the pecking order at right guard after veteran Will Putnam moved to center and solidified that position…

West Berlin 1986 - 1989, I lived in Kreuzberg, West Berlin., SO 36 , Germany. A cultural melting pot. From Oranien Bar; To Cafe M – Goltzstrasse 33: To drinking beers at the Risiko. with Blixr Bargeld of The Bad Seeds. To dancing at Dschungel Club with Sadie – Nürnberger Straße 53, To hanging with Nina Hagen. To standing on the film set of "Der Him…

Clemson's first-year defensive coordinator reflects on his building anticipation of filling the expansive shoes of Brent Venables. "A lot of excitement, waking up at 4 AM and just a lot of things are running through your mind," Wes Goodwin said. To outsiders, Goodwin was an obscure name on Clemson's staff until Dabo Swinney made the unconventional …