This is an opinion column.

It was 20 years ago today. OK, maybe not today exactly, but one day in February of 2003, Dabo Swinney’s phone rang, and his life changed. For better and forever. Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden needed a new wide receivers coach and wanted to know if Swinney was interested.

Boy, howdy, was he. He’d been out of coaching for two seasons. Not two months earlier, as Alabama introduced Mike Price as its head coach, Swinney interviewed with him and landed a job back at his alma mater as tight ends coach. Or so he thought.

After Price coached Washington State in the Rose Bowl and returned to Tuscaloosa, he informed Swinney that, with Price’s two sons on the staff, he needed an SEC veteran to tutor the tight ends. He had decided to go with Sparky Woods.

Never mind that Swinney, who’d spent 12 years as part of the Alabama program as player and coach, had more SEC experience than Woods. The job disappeared. His faith did not. Then Bowden called, Swinney went to visit and Clemson hired him. Three months later, Alabama fired Price.

Five years after that, midway through Swinney’s sixth season coaching Clemson’s wide receivers, the school fired Bowden. Swinney phoned his wife with that news and more.