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When Will Merritt walked back into Death Valley, he wasn’t just revisiting old memories. He was stepping into a living ecosystem where former players still matter. On one sideline, you had Merritt shoulder-to-shoulder with Kyle Young, T.J. Watkins, John McDermott, Brady Washburn, and tight end Jason LeMay—swapping stories, busting chops, and, more importantly, being visible to the current roster. On the other, Matt Luke’s offensive line drilled through technique periods while the old heads watched like proud (and demanding) older brothers. That’s the Clemson loop: alumni show up, the standard speaks, and the present tense gets a little sharper.
Merritt swears this isn’t ceremonial. Dabo Swinney’s open-door policy is real—former Tigers from the 60s through the 2000s are encouraged to be around, not as props, but as proof. You can feel it in the way a practice period tightens when familiar faces settle in behind the drills. You hear it in the conversations that start with jokes and end with reminders about what the paw actually requires. “He was building a foundation,” Merritt said of Swinney’s early years. The result is a culture where yesterday’s players keep investing in today’s team—because they were invited to, and because it still means something.
There’s humility in the alumni chorus, too. After the mini-reunion, Merritt laughed that by day’s end the tall tales had grown, then admitted the current group’s size, speed, and polish would likely bury him on a depth chart. It wasn’t false modesty. It was recognition that decades of standards—strength, nutrition, film, technique—compound over time.
He pointed to longtime strength coach Joey Batson’s imprint as the connective tissue: players are bigger and faster now, but they’re also better trained, better synchronized, and better prepared. When former players say the game has changed, they’re not lamenting it; they’re proud of what their era helped build.
That pride is why national titles hit alumni in the chest. Merritt was in the building for 2016 and 2018, arm-in-arm with family and friends, fully aware that those rings don’t belong to the old guard, but the work behind them does.
The emotion isn’t nostalgia for its own sake; it’s gratitude that the investment of previous teams still cashes out on the biggest stages. It also explains why they’re back at practice in August, why the photos get taken and the stories get told: to make sure the current roster knows that a Clemson standard existed before them and will exist after them—and that they’re responsible for carrying it.
Ask Merritt where it’s all headed, and he doesn’t flinch. He believes the window is still open, wide. “I do not think that 2018 was his last national championship,” he said of Swinney. “I don’t believe he’s done with two. I’m not even sure he’s done with three. I think he’ll be on a track to potentially win three or more before he decides to hang it up.” That’s not message-board bravado; it’s conviction from someone who watched the foundation get poured and now sees the alumni pipeline reinforcing it year after year.
The bet, in Merritt’s mind, is simple. When former players are welcomed back, standards don’t fade with graduating classes; they compound. When a new staff voice like Luke’s layers technique onto continuity and health, the line plays like one brain. When defenders in Tom Allen’s system look fast and decisive, the old heads nod because the film matches the talk. And when that whole operation unfolds under an open-door policy that keeps the past in the room, complacency has fewer places to hide.
That’s the real takeaway from Merritt’s visit. Clemson’s advantage isn’t just the latest recruiting class or schematic tweak. It’s the alumni force multiplier. Dozens of living reminders that the program is bigger than any one Saturday. The current team inherits that weight every time a former Tiger leans on the rail to watch practice.
If Merritt’s right, those quiet August moments, with alumni present, standards enforced, and buy-in visible, are how you stack seasons that end with confetti. “We’re not done yet,” he said in so many words. The old guard believes it. Now it’s on the new one to add to the case.
