How much fun do you think Dabo had signing this?
Update: We've received some notes the photo below is a fake. It remains up on Dano's Facebook page at this time. Original article below.
No matter how old you are, chances are you've seen this photo before.
If you've ever seen it in person, chances are it carries a Nolan Ryan autograph because Ryan loves autographing this photo. Who wouldn't love a photo of their 46-year-old selves (seriously, Ryan was 46 when this happened) holding some punk 20 years your junior in a headlock with one arm while your free hand is balled up in a fist?
Oh look, there's another autographed photo.
Anyway, no matter how happy Nolan Ryan ever was to autograph that photo, it won't touch how happy Dabo Swinney was to autograph this one, posted to the Dano's Pizza Facebook page and shared by The State.
As you can see, that's an obviously fake photo of an adult Steve Spurrier spanking the backside of a child Dabo Swinney. It's easy to see why that photo went on the wall of a Columbia, S.C., pizzeria -- because that was essentially a metaphor for the Carolina-Clemson rivalry for the first five years of Dabo's tenure as Clemson's head coach.
A 31-14 win over the Gamecocks helped win Swinney the full-time Clemson job, but for the next half-decade Spurrier treated him, well, like a mid-century parent disciplining a misbehaving child.
South Carolina thumped Clemson 34-17 in 2009 and 29-7 in 2010. The rivalry arguably hit its competitive peak over the next three years, as Clemson steadily improved under Swinney, from 6-7 in 2010 to 10-4 with an ACC championship in 2011, to 11-2 with a No. 11 AP finish in 2012, and to 11-2 with a No. 8 final ranking in 2013. Still, Clemson could not get over its Carolina hump, losing 34-13 in 2011, 27-17 in 2012 and 31-17 in 2013.
Half a decade in, it seemed like that would be Dabo's legacy at Clemson -- a nice guy and good program builder who couldn't beat Jimbo Fisher at Florida State and Steve Spurrier at South Carolina.
While Florida State won the 2013 national title -- a 51-14 demolition of No. 3 Clemson in Death Valley was the turning point of that title run -- South Carolina out-performed Clemson not just on the final Saturday of November, but throughout the entire fall. Clemson went 32-8 with two top-15 finishes and one top-10 finish from 2011-13, but South Carolina was 33-6 with three top-10 finishes, including a No. 4 final ranking in 2013, the highest finish by either Palmetto State rival since Clemson's 1981 national title.
In fact, so successful was the Head Ball Coach that it wouldn't have seemed crazy that Spurrier would push Swinney out of his job, as Clemson would use the infrastructure Dabo built and expand upon it with someone they thought could actually beat their rivals.
We don't know exactly when that photoshop went up at Dano's, but it was probably somewhere around this time.
Instead, Dabo kept his job and kept building. Clemson finally beat South Carolina in 2014, a 35-17 thumping that helped the Tigers secure their fourth straight 10-win season while sentencing South Carolina to a 7-6 season. Spurrier wouldn't even stick around for the 2015 Palmetto Bowl; he retired six games into Carolina's season.
While South Carolina went through transition, Clemson kept climbing. Since 2015, Dabo's program is 55-4 with four ACC championships, four College Football Playoff appearances, two national championships and -- lest we forget -- four wins over South Carolina, only one of them by fewer than 21 points.
Clemson is now level with Alabama as the best overall program in college football and South Carolina is trying to build a program that can compete with their in-state rival while sucking in Clemson's exhaust.
The worm has indeed turned, to the point where Dabo can autograph a photo of himself getting spanked by Steve Spurrier and do it with a smile that probably stretched from Hilton Head to Spartanburg.
