For Clemson's Jeff Scott, the dream of coaching began as a kid in an FSU locker room

Wednesday night is family night for the Clemson football staff, the most important night of the week.

When we make our way to Clemson’s indoor practice facility to await Dabo Swinney’s practice update, you can easily spot the children running around Swinney’s playground as practice wraps up.

Coach’s wives, sons, and daughters then make their way inside for family dinner. Everyone on the staff gets to sit down with their loved ones and hang out with one another. It’s an evening full of fellowship, not football.

As Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott looks up from his meal, he can see children playing. Some of the kids have made their way outside to the basketball court. The sun is setting and the air is starting to become more crisp.

Scott then has a flashback. A flashback to a time he’ll never forget.

The co-offensive coordinator spent a lot of time during his youth hanging out with his dad Brad Scott, an assistant for the Florida State Seminoles for 11 years. The Seminoles at the time were coached by legendary head coach Bobby Bowden, who had a unique philosophy regarding coaches and their families.

“I give coach Bobby Bowden a lot of credit because he was one of the few college coaches at that

time that allowed the coach’s families and kids to have full access,” Jeff said.

Jeff remembers spending time in the Florida State locker room, on the sidelines, and of course, the Wednesday night family meals. It was the same deal then as it is today at Clemson. Both coming at the midst of the most successful years in both programs’ history.

From the span of 1987 to 2000, the Seminoles never had a season where they finished with less than ten wins. When the ACC started in 1992, the Seminoles won the conference every year during that same span. They also never finished a season ranked outside of the top five in the AP poll.

As dominant of an era that you’ll see.

And there was Jeff Scott, right there in the middle of it as a wide-eyed youth watching his pops work alongside the legendary Bowden.

The Seminoles were loaded with talent during that decade. One of the best players of that era was quarterback Charlie Ward, who won the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, and the Davey O’Brien Award in 1993 as he led the Seminoles to their first-ever national championship.

Ward went on to play in the NBA after not getting drafted by an NFL organization. Jeff remembers getting to hang out with Ward before any of the fame or accolades.

Jeff spent a lot of time around Ward’s locker before games. Can you imagine being a kid getting to be in some of those locker rooms before some of those Florida State matchups during that time?

There was one moment that will always stick out to Jeff. The moment in a Florida State locker room where he decided he wanted to pursue coaching.

The year was 1991 and the No. 1-ranked Seminoles were set to face off against bitter rival No. 2 Miami at home. The crowd was fired up and Jeff can still distinctly hear the war chants from Seminole fans minutes before the team took the field.

Jeff was sitting at Ward’s locker and Ward was on a bench in front of him preparing for the game. Suddenly, coach Bowden walked through the doors and gave a pregame speech to his team.

“It was at that very moment, I remember it like it was yesterday, I was like, ‘yeah, that’s what I want to do,’” Jeff said. “I hadn’t even been a player yet. I knew I wanted to do that, but I was like, ‘that’s what I want to do. I want to be a head coach.’”

The Seminoles went on to lose 17-16, but Jeff will always remember that pregame moment. It was that experience plus the many years spent at Florida State so close to the team that really made his love for the game bloom.

“The experience that I had for about nine or ten years at Florida State, growing up in the locker rooms, being on the sidelines, the Wednesday night family meals - I can remember when Charlie Ward was there, every Wednesday night we had family meal,” Jeff added. “He’d come over to the table and get me and brother and take us down to the gym and we’d shoot baskets with him every Wednesday night and I’m like ten or 11 years old.

“So just those memories growing up around that, going to bowl games every year, that was a big part of why I knew I wanted to go into coaching.”

The culture that Bowden created at Florida State with the family atmosphere is the same culture Swinney as engulfed Clemson with. The two coaches are similar. Not just in their ability to win football games, but with their rich “what you see is what you get” personalities.

“Coach Bowden always took time to speak to people,” Jeff continued. “It didn’t matter if you were walking through the airport and a security person said something to coach Bowden and he would go over there and talk to them for a minute as we were getting ready to go get on a plane or something. Coach Swinney is the exact same way… he has a genuine interest in other people.”

So every Wednesday night, the flashbacks of Jeff’s younger years start flooding back to his memory. If it wasn’t for the access Bowden allowed back then, who knows if or when Scott would have been drawn to do what his father does?

Like how Charlie Ward would sneak him away from the adults down to the gym to shoot hoops, he sees that same type of impact at Clemson’s facility on Wednesday nights.

Maybe that same type of family atmosphere and influence will one day inspire a coach’s child to pursue coaching - or whatever dream they may have. Maybe they’ll have that same moment of clarity that they won’t ever forget.

“To me, it’s really cool when it’s Wednesday night or just another time when our families are here and I am seeing Christian Wilkins playing basketball with the other coach’s kids now,” Jeff said.

“It just brings back lots of memories.”