The Notebook

Scott has had an opportunity to learn from the best.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Sun Apr 19 10:05:17 GMT-05:00 2020

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney will happily show his notebooks to visitors to his office, and one day Jeff Scott will do the same thing.

When Swinney was a graduate assistant he began to compile notes, notes that eventually turned into several binders, that would be the blueprint for his head coaching career. Scott, who was hired as the head coach at South Florida in December, followed Swinney’s idea.

“I had a notebook. It was kind of my head coach notebook, whenever you're a head coach of a program one day. And you just put a lot of different things in there,” Scott told TigerNet. “Some of it may be recruiting-related handouts and itineraries. One of the things that Coach Swinney does a great job of is really developing his staff. So, like when we'd have the All-In meetings in July, which would be four or five days of 10-hour meetings and they bring lunch in to you. Sometimes those would get long and tedious. But really what he was doing, number one, he was getting everybody on the same page for that season, and getting the plan down. But he also did it as a way to develop his staff and prepare his staff for future opportunities to lead a program.”

The idea has obviously worked for Swinney and the Clemson program.

“After going through that with him for 11 or 12 years, the All-In notebook that I have is a great resource for me. That's definitely one that I look at several times a week as I'm trying to organize and make plans,” Scott said. “But also I have another binder that I've just kind of kept through the years and always I'm either taking notes in there or kept certain documents that I felt like would help me down the line, and things that just helped prepare me for this type of opportunity.”

In addition to the notebook, Scott also reached out to his friends in the business.

“Coach (Chad) Morris and I are really good friends. So I think it was very valuable for me to kind of communicate with him as he left Clemson to go to SMU, and kind of the highs and lows and positives and negatives and all the things that went with that,” Scott said. “There was communication back and forth. And so that really helped me now kind of going into my role. And then there's no question really all the people at Clemson. I mean, especially a guy like Tony Elliott. He and I've worked so closely together for so many years, and I think he's going to be an outstanding head coach. He's a great communicator and he is just very, very smart, understands the game. But more importantly understands, the players and how to communicate to them effectively.

“So I've observed different things from different coaches on our staff that I think has helped me. But obviously, the every day around Coach Swinney, being in those staff meetings for 12 years. I mean that's where I've gotten the majority of my knowledge and things that are prepared me. And then also just being around my dad every day. It's one thing to grow up in a household of a coach. But I had a very rare opportunity that I was working in the same building as him a few years while he was actually on the staff coaching, and then the last eight years as he was an administrator.”