Dabo Swinney has earned Clemson fans in the heart of Crimson Tide country
Jason Miller, left, and Ellis McCartney consider Ervil Sweeney their father and themselves step-brothers to Dabo Swinney. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr./Alabama NewsCenter)
Jason Miller doesn’t usually wear college sports caps and shirts when he goes on service calls for Alabaster’s M&M Hardware. He made an exception the past week with the National Championship Game coming up and has drawn curious looks from his customers.
“Oh, my goodness,” Miller said, recalling the reaction to him wearing a Clemson T-shirt and cap. “You’re wearing this in Alabama country?”
Nick Saban leads Alabama into the title game at 7:30 tonight on ESPN against No. 1 Clemson. And even though Tigers coach Dabo Swinney is a former Tide player and assistant coach, he gets little love from fans in these parts. Even folks who know him as a Pelham native are at best split in their support.
But members of the M&M Hardware family lean totally toward the Atlantic Coast Conference team from South Carolina, even though they are usually Tide fans themselves.
“We’re gonna be pulling for the orange team,” said Ellis McCartney, who calls himself Swinney’s step-brother. “We’re Alabama fans until something like this happens and then we’re going to pull for him.”
As McCartney spoke, his wife, Tonya, walked in wearing a Clemson T-shirt. She was the picture of a fan with a split personality as she carried a houndstooth purse, wallet and cellphone.
“I usually have houndstooth everything,” she said, noting her collection of hats, caps, shoes and hair bows. “I’m an Alabama fan from head to toe. But for this game, I’m Clemson.”
Tonya McCartney acknowledged that her husband and Dabo Swinney are not “technically” step-brothers.
“(Dabo’s dad) Ervil was like a father to us here,” she said. “We spent Christmas and Thanksgiving with him. He was family but not technically family. He was family. Not blood family but family.”
“Everybody knows him as our father,” Ellis McCartney said.
M&M Hardware experienced a loss in its family on Aug. 8 when “Big Erv” Swinney as he was called, lost his second bout with cancer. The day before he died, he bought a service van for the business. Like their other service vehicles, that van has a Clemson tag on its front bumper.
“He’s probably got the best seat in the house for the whole thing but it’s hard for us knowing how happy he’d be sitting here watching all this take place,” Ellis McCartney said. “For him to miss it is sad.”
Miller said he learned the appliance business from his adopted father, the elder Swinney.
“My dad would have been happy,” Miller said, viewing the Tide as a measuring stick for Dabo. “He thought if he could play Alabama, he’d made it. That was the top of the top.”
The McCartneys expect to be in the minority in their Columbiana home on Monday night as most of their visitors will be tied to the Tide.
“It’ll be like any typical Saturday-type football game (with) family and friends,” Ellis McCartney said. “But we’ll just be pulling a different way.”
