Best of 2024, Part 2

In Part 2 of our Best of 2024 podcast, we revisit some of the more memorable excerpts from our interviews over the past year:

-- Thomas Austin, on what it's like to deal with being fired by Dabo Swinney. In 2008, Austin was an offensive lineman on the team that helped Swinney secure the head-coaching job with a victory over South Carolina. Swinney even rode on Austin's shoulders to midfield that day to shake the hand of Steve Spurrier.

-- Otis Pickett, on returning to his alma mater from Mississippi to be the historian of Clemson University. A significant part of Pickett's mission is introducing and framing the public conversation on Clemson's past, which includes difficult and complicated topics on race.

-- Cliff Ellis, former Clemson basketball coach, shares numerous stories about his musical career. Had he not chosen coaching, Ellis could've easily spent his life as a professional musician. In the mid-1960s, his group The Villagers was a sensation and even recorded at the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. Ellis remembers joining Roy Orbison on stage at a sold-out concert in Dothan, Ala.

"If you can perform in front of people with Roy Orbison behind you, you're going to be OK going up against Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski," he said.

-- Tommy West looks back to a totally different time for Clemson football in the 1990s when the Tigers didn't have any facilities to speak of and were so behind on that front that he once tried to stage an August practice at a local livestock arena.