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SUNSET, S.C. — Six years removed from his last day on the most intense of jobs, six weeks shy of his seventh season of his second professional act, Tracy Swinney takes a seat outside a golf course clubhouse and canvasses the landscape around him.

The view from this unincorporated community — some 20 miles of winding road north of the campus most here call home — is, all puns aside, sunny. Clemson coaches, on their second day back from summer vacation, are holding their annual golf outing, the course’s greenery and July’s relatively tame air conspiring to paint a picture-perfect day.

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Swinney and his wife have the youngest of their four kids close to home, with Asher about to begin Clemson’s MBA program after earning his diploma as an undergraduate. A nephew, Jack, also just graduated from Clemson after lettering with the football team and is working locally with a bank. A sister-in-law, Suzanne, a born-and-bred Alabaman who graduated from Clemson and married a Clemson alum, has a lake house nearby that the couple plans on making its permanent residence in the coming years.

“When you say family with Clemson,” Swinney says, laughing at the cliché he is living, “it’s real family.”

His brother is the reason that almost everyone is here, with Dabo Swinney now on the brink of his 10th full season as Clemson’s head coach. This decade has been defined by Dabo’s DNA, and though to the layman that can mean rallying cries about guts or ill-fated dab attempts, it can also mean a staff filled with dudes who played with their boss at Alabama or for him at Clemson.

In Tracy Swinney’s case, it means a title and a paycheck to do what, in some ways, he has always done: Look out for baby bro. He was hired as Clemson’s director of football security in 2012 and has been a community liaison ever since, helping the second-winningest coach of the past decade navigate the demands that come with being at the center of the sport’s biggest moments, whether that is directing him from the on-field interview to the locker room after the customary postgame field-storming or simply filling in for him when he has one-too-many speaking engagements.

He is six years older than his boss but resembles him just enough — at least in the face — to make a few curious passersby do a double-take.

“And I’ll take my hat off and go: I’m not,” he quips. “I have no hair. He’s got a head full of hair.”

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Thirty years as a police officer will do that to a man, if not much more. Tracy Swinney was in charge of the Pelham (Ala.) Police Department’s patrol division when he retired in 2012, having done everything from SWAT duties to investigations to the school services unit.

He saw some stuff. He lived some stuff. He dealt with a lot of sadness. He felt the reward of being able to help folks in need.

“The one thing I miss about law enforcement is the camaraderie of our buddies in that locker room, which is similar to what we have here,” he says. “Being in that locker room, being together as a team, that’s what we had. We had a huge locker room and we all worked together and it was life or death every day. Is this gonna be the last time I see that guy walk out of that locker room? And you had to have humor to get you through it. So a lot of sadness, but you just adapt to it, you get used to it after a while. Some people get into law enforcement, they stay about five years and they go: ‘I can’t do this.’ ”

On a few occasions, yes, his life was in danger.

“Just working SWAT details, you’re serving high-risk felony warrants, you’re doing high-risk arrests, executive protection and training all the time,” he says. “Just training is dangerous when you’re using a lot of high-powered machines and ammunition and you’re jumping through windows, you’re repelling out of helicopters. A lot of things can happen. 

“But yeah, there was a lot of danger involved, but you need to be ready when it happens. That’s why we just trained all the time, because I always said: Look, 90 percent of the time you’re gonna be writing reports, you’re gonna be waving to people, you’re gonna be walking in the shopping centers.”

They are judged, ultimately, on that other 10 percent of the time.

“You better be ready. You. Better. Be. Ready.”

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He hates to see how, these days, the police have become the enemy in some people’s minds. He gets it, though. There have been too many officers, in too many different parts of the country, who have not upheld the standard that he and all of the good cops that he worked with bled and sweat for every day. 

Technology has offered the general public a wider glimpse into that dark side, and Swinney knows whom the onus is on to make things right.

“I always taught those guys: Look, man, you are held to a higher standard, whether you like it or not. You’re held to a higher standard. Be professional and be nice, even if somebody’s being real rude to you. Be nice. Be nice. You can handle the situation, but you’ve got to handle it nicely.”

His family was proud of him. Heck, the whole community was. Save for college, he had lived in the same place his whole life. He met his wife in high school. Some of the teachers he came across when working the school services unit had taught him when he was younger. As his brother’s profile grew 300 miles away at Clemson, the Swinney name started to carry some weight around town. Tracy was embedded in the fabric of the community.

His retirement plan, in the loosest possible definition of the term, was to do internal security work for NASCAR. He would likely move to Charlotte, N.C., or Daytona, Fla. He would travel a lot.

Then Dabo called with a modest proposal: Why not come to Clemson? The Tigers had just won the ACC title. They were a program on the rise, and with all of that looming notoriety, Dabo was going to need someone by his side he could trust.

The coach lived up to his promise, keeping big bro busy through three consecutive ACC title game trips (and counting) and three straight College Football Playoff trips (and counting), which for Tracy means flying with ops director Mike Dooley to a new destination two days before games to meet with stadium and hotel personnel and ensure the smoothest possible itineraries for players upon arrival.

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He stands by Dabo on game days, along with two state troopers. When an in-demand player like Deshaun Watson or Sammy Watkins comes around, Tracy makes sure that player has a buffer on Saturdays, lest he be put in a compromising position.

This life is a little more relaxed than his previous one, to put it lightly. But his past has taught him about the world we live in, and so he always tries to stay a step ahead, though he can still allow for his everyman brother to do his regular Wal-Mart or Publix shopping without any unnecessary detail.

“It’s been a blessing,” Dabo Swinney says. “(30) years as a policeman sergeant working the night shift, to see him be able to retire and be able to come up here — he’s always been there, even when I was a player at Alabama. He would come every Tuesday, his off day. He’d come watch me practice. And so he’s always been incredibly supportive, so to have him there and know he’s got my back and does such a great job dealing with the community, being a liaison for me and helping us with our (All In) Foundation, he’s just been awesome. And he loves it, because he’s invested in the whole situation.”

Tracy has admired Dabo’s spirit for as long as he can remember, swearing even today that he knew his brother was on to something special when he was a youngster who promised his parents that he would become a pediatrician to make people feel better and earn enough money to buy them a big house.

“And then he got involved with football at Alabama,” Tracy says. “And then he started to grow and mature and got around a lot of really great people like Woody McCorvey and Gene Stallings. He just found his path. They’re all here, all great people and great friends and people that he knows are loyal and that he can trust, and he has definitely surrounded himself with great, great people.”

Some of whom may even know a thing or two about making people feel better.

(Top photo by Tyler Smith / Getty Images)

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