'A rocket ship': How Clemson, Dabo Swinney helped Chansi Stuckey get to Notre Dame

This Notre Dame football article originally appeared on BlueandGold.com on Feb. 18, 2022. It’s been republished in its original form in light of the Fighting Irish’s matchup against Clemson this week.

SOUTH BEND — New Notre Dame wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey saw replays of the previous days’ proceedings over and over in his mind. He couldn’t shake the thought of them.

People from all over the country coming together for a collective goal under a unified brand. A sense of camaraderie lending itself to clarity. Objectives specifically spelled out without having to dot the I’s or cross the T’s.  

“It was a unique feeling,” Stuckey said. “I had never seen anything like it.”

He knew then and there, flying south from Santa Clara, Calif., to Los Angeles, that his life was on the verge of changing forever. One phone call was all it would take. A man of conviction, Stuckey believed that.

So did Jock McKissic, a longtime friend who saw the same compelling situation in Santa Clara.

Stuckey tried to settle back into his life in L.A. despite mentally drifting back to the Bay Area at every turn. So he made the call, with some persuasion from McKissic. On the other end of the line was the man responsible for the operation Stuckey was so enamored by.

The one he couldn’t stop thinking about.

“That’s when he told me he was really feeling called back to football,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney told BlueandGold.com. “And I told him that I think the best coaches are those who are called to coach.”

PROMOTION: Join for only $10 to unlock premium access until the start of the 2023 football season

‘Man, I could be around that every day’

It was January 2019. Football hadn’t been top of mind for Stuckey for seven years.

Clemson won its third national championship and second in the last three seasons. McKissic and Stuckey were there to see their alma mater win it all. They were teammates at Clemson in the mid-2000s, a decently successful era but not anything comparable to what the Tigers have done in the last decade.

Still, winning wasn’t new to McKissic. He attended the national title game two years prior when Clemson beat Alabama for its first national championship in 35 years. He has tried to make it to at least one game in Clemson for the past several seasons. Close with Swinney, McKissic was the reason Stuckey was able to see the ins and outs of Clemson’s preparation in the days leading up to the game at Levi’s Stadium.

Those events were certainly new to Stuckey, who hadn’t been as tightly connected to Clemson since graduating. Stuckey starred for Swinney, then the Tigers’ wide receivers coach, from 2003-06. He was a two-time All-ACC First-Team selection. The accolades were nice, but to Stuckey they paled in comparison to the customs created by Swinney since he took over as head coach in 2009.

“I told him he’d be blown away, but I didn’t know he’d be as blown away as he was,” McKissic told BlueandGold.com. “From the moment we got there and met with the team, Chansi was different. He was like, ‘Man, I could be around that every day.’ He was wowed more and more as time progressed.”

RELATED

• What Chansi Stuckey is looking for from Notre Dame football wide receivers

Stuckey gravitated to the Clemson coaches and players so dedicated to achieving a desired outcome that there was no way they could fail. And they didn’t. They beat Alabama 44-16, a scoreline less consequential to Stuckey than the process of getting to such domination.

“The ultimate goal is not to win championships,” Stuckey said. “Those are great, but it’s to affect these men so 30 years from now they can come back and tell me I helped them be a better husband and father. A better person.”  

Spoken like a pastor? That’s because Stuckey was aspiring to be one at the time. He was working in the ministry with one intention: to make others’ lives better. Being around Clemson made him realize he didn’t need a church for that.

He needed a football field.

Swinney, on the phone outside the White House after Clemson’s traditional celebratory dinner with the U.S. President, offered 35-year-old Stuckey a video graduate assistant position. He didn’t think he’d take it given his age and the minimal pay, but Stuckey didn’t think twice. The next time he spoke to McKissic after returning from the game, it was to tell his friend he was on his way to South Carolina.

“And I couldn’t have been more ecstatic,” McKissic said. “He really would be doing himself and the world an injustice if he didn’t tap into this coaching thing.”

‘One of the greatest experiences of my life’

Clemson has been home to Swinney for nearly two decades. He hasn’t left since he arrived in 2003. He was the architect of the program’s rise to prominence. An ascension McKissic had grown accustomed to but was still so foreign to Stuckey.

After a five-year NFL career, Stuckey moved to California. He started acting. He started a new life, one that contained principles of the Clemson environment that captivated him years later. The team-first mentality never really left Stuckey. Rather, it was reborn.

In L.A., Stuckey attacked his aspirations with a sense of purpose similar to Swinney’s. He landed a gig as a stand-in for a Kevin Hart comedy called “The Wedding Ringer.” Stuckey’s part was small. He played a football player in a muddy scrimmage scene. The inner athlete never truly departed after all.

Airtime wasn’t his main mission. He just wanted to be a part of something special. To him, he was.

More Notre Dame football

• Why Tommy Rees saw Harry Hiestand as the only option for the Notre Dame offensive line

“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” Stuckey said. “It’s a team aspect, but there’s also an individual component to it. When everyone on set comes together to play their roles with camaraderie and makes a beautiful movie, it’s kind of like playing in a game.”

The years spent away from football weren’t a waste. McKissic always thought Stuckey would find the game again whether it would have been 10 years ago or three. But first, Stuckey had to find himself. He did so through sports broadcasting in New York, acting in L.A. and even starting a cooking show while he was still playing for the Arizona Cardinals in 2011.

Those interests aren’t going anywhere. Stuckey has already found his favorite coffee shop in South Bend. He has an assortment of exotic brews in his office on campus too. He became a coffee connoisseur during life after football. Like learning he could impact peoples’ lives as a coach, he learned coffee was a coaching staple as well.

‘He had so many big moments’

Whether it’s coffee beans or inspiring others, Stuckey is a person roused by passion.

Fellow former Clemson wide receiver and current Virginia head coach Tony Elliott saw it every day as Stuckey’s teammate. Elliott described Stuckey as bubbly. Genuine. A really good human with plenty of personality. An ultimate worker on the task at hand.

“When he asks you a question, he legitimately wants to know,” Elliott told BlueandGold.com. “He wants to grow and get better. But also, he’s a fierce competitor. Don’t let the smile and the cooking and the culture he’s been exposed to fool you.”

For Swinney, it’s Stuckey’s ability to relate to everybody that makes him special. His great energy and spirit. The “ultimate competitor” within and the “contagious enthusiasm” exuded on the outside.

“He wasn’t the biggest guy, but he played big,” Swinney said. “And he had so many big moments.”

Stuckey’s knowledge stood out to McKissic.

“The game came easy to him,” McKissic said. “He may not have been the tallest guy or the fastest guy, but he was smarter than the guys he was going against.”

Those traits led to Stuckey’s seventh-round selection by the New York Jets in 2007 NFL Draft. He stuck around the league for five seasons. He caught 106 passes for over 1,000 yards and five touchdowns. Not bad for a recruit who showed up at Clemson as a quarterback. Who other than Swinney to facilitate a position swap?

“You’re going to be a good backup quarterback, but this guy Charlie Whitehurst is going to play a long time in the pros,” Swinney said he told Stuckey. “If you move to receiver and give me two years, you’re going to be drafted and play in the NFL.”

Bingo.

‘The right person for our program’

Stuckey resented Swinney’s advice at first. He wasn’t a wide receiver. He was a quarterback. Looking back, coming around to accepting it was the day Stuckey’s life changed for the better — in athletics and every other avenue.

“Change isn’t always bad,” Stuckey said. “As young people we have this vision. And if anything deviates from that, the world is over. I can tell them that’s not true. Look at the change I did.”

Willingness to take a leap of faith isn’t necessarily innate. It’s a quality learned and developed. Sometimes, it’s simply listening to an inner voice. That’s what Stuckey did when he made the trip to the national championship game three years ago. Now he’s the wide receivers coach at Notre Dame.

Stuckey called it “a favor of God.” Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t an accident.

“We knew when he came in he was different,” Elliott said. “He was special. He has a unique passion, love and a way of inspiring and identifying the good in everybody and being able to accentuate those positives.”

“Once he made this commitment that he wanted to be a coach, he’s done the same thing that he did as a player — he’s blossomed,” Swinney added. “And he has a bright, bright future.”

Not just a bright future. A golden one.

“The moment you’re around him, there’s an energy, there’s a personality there that you immediately put your belief in someone like that,” Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said.

“Tommy put him through the wringer,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said of the interview process. “Tommy came in and said, ‘He’s the guy I want.’ So I said, ‘Let me interview him.’ I spent 30 to 45 minutes with him and said, ‘He’s the right person for our program.'”

‘Like a rocket ship in this profession’

Stuckey’s stay on Swinney’s staff spanned all of two years. Clemson went back to the CFP in 2019 and again in 2020. The Tigers had a 24-3 record while Stuckey was there. Then Baylor head coach Dave Aranda called Swinney, and Stuckey was gone. Just like that.

It didn’t surprise Swinney in the slightest.  

“I told him, ‘If you come in here and commit yourself to a couple of years, it is not going to take you long,'” Swinney recalled of his initial pitch to Stuckey in 2019. “‘You’re going to be like a rocket ship in this profession.'”

Freeman did to Aranda what Aranda did to Swinney. Poached Stuckey from the staff. Ironically, it only took Stuckey three years to land a job Swinney desperately wanted when he already had eight years of coaching on his ledger. Swinney was let go from the staff at Alabama when head coach Mike DuBose was fired after the 2000 season. Swinney had been an assistant there, his alma mater, since 1993.

Notre Dame had an opening for a receivers coach at the same time, but Irish head coach Bob Davie gave it to Joker Williams, who only stayed on the Irish’s staff for one season. Davie was fired after the 2001 campaign.

“It didn’t work out, but it’s cool all these years later to see one of my guys be the receivers coach there,” Swinney said.

All it took was a trip to Northern California, an awakening, a phone call and some coffee.