Note: The following appears in the Virginia football gameday program.
Prior to the 2003 season, Jon Solomon of the Anderson Independent newspaper did a survey of the Clemson team. One of the questions he asked the players was, “Who is the most respected player on the team?”
Tony Elliott was by far the top answer to that question. At season’s end, he was named one of the permanent co-captains of that squad that finished on an incredible run with wins over No. 3 Florida State and No. 6 Tennessee to finish ranked in the top 25 in the nation.
Today, Elliott is just the third Clemson graduate and former player (Mike O’Cain (NC State) and Bobby Johnson (Furman) are the others) to serve as the head coach of an opposing team at Memorial Stadium.
During that 2003 season, Elliott played all 13 games and had 23 receptions for 286 yards and a touchdown under first-year Wide Receivers Coach Dabo Swinney.
“I could see during that season that Tony had great leadership qualities and had a future in coaching if he wanted to pursue it,” said Swinney.
“If he wanted to pursue it,” was an important qualifier, because Elliott had opportunities in the engineering world. After graduation, Elliott accepted a job with Michelin.
But after a couple of years, something was missing for Elliott.
“I was having an impact on the people at Michelin, but I had a desire to work with young people and decided I wanted to go into coaching.”
Elliott returned to the gridiron in 2006 as a wide receivers coach at South Carolina State. After two years, he moved back to the Upstate, serving as wide receivers coach at Furman.
Just after the 2010 season, Swinney had an opening on his staff (running backs coach) and offered the position to Elliott. The offer in itself had significant meaning to Elliott.
At the age of nine in 1989, Elliott was witness to his mother’s death in a traffic accident on Sycamore Street in California. At a January 2010 coaches convention in California, Elliott took Swinney to the exact intersection of the accident, because he wanted to show Swinney where the event that changed his life took place.
So when Swinney decided to hire Elliott for the position, he invited him to dinner at his home in Clemson…on Sycamore Drive.
“I told Tony I wanted him to accept it right here,” stated Swinney. “It was the same street name where he’d had such a traumatic experience as a kid, and I wanted him to have a great experience now. I think God winks at you and gives you confirmation from time to time. I think God winked to me. I was contemplating things, and that was the confirmation I needed.”
It did not take long for Swinney to see confirmation of his ability as a coach. While he never had coached the running back position, he studied, sought advice and helped Clemson to its first ACC championship in 20 years in 2011.
When Offensive Coordinator Chad Morris left Clemson to become the head coach at SMU at the end of the 2014 regular season, Swinney decided to make Elliott and Wide Receivers Coach Jeff Scott co-offensive coordinators.
Elliott and Scott had been teammates and pregame stretching partners at Clemson. Their ability to work together continued as coaches. Elliott was in the press box as the playcaller.
Their first game as co-coordinators was against Oklahoma in the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl. The 40-6 victory was a foreshadowing of things to come. The first playcall was a 65-yard touchdown pass from Cole Stoudt to Artavis Scott.
In Elliott’s 99 games as co-coordinator or coordinator between 2014-21, Clemson had an 89-10 record with six trips to the College Football Playoff, four national title game appearances and two national championships.
In those 99 games calling plays, Clemson averaged 38 points and 484 yards per game. That included 201 rushing yards and 283 passing yards per game.
In 2017, Elliott won the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in college football. He became just the second African-American to win the award, joining Randy Shannon (2001).
It is not a coincidence that Clemson’s run of 12 straight seasons with double-digit wins and a still-active streak of 13 straight top-25 seasons started when Elliott became one of Swinney’s full-time assistants.
Elliott is now in his third year as Virginia’s head coach and has the program on the upswing after a difficult first year, when three players were killed in an on-campus shooting.
To lead a program back from such a tragedy, Virginia needs a man of Elliott’s level of respect.
He is just the man to do it.
