Jeff Scott on potentially returning to Clemson football: ‘You never know’

Jeff Scott walked onto the field at Memorial Stadium last fall, surrounded by Clemson football players about to take on Notre Dame , and immediately felt comfortable.

Maybe a little too comfortable.

“I had to keep myself from going over there to the corner where you warm up the wideouts, you know?” Scott joked last month in a radio appearance on 105.5 FM The Roar . “I had to remind myself. … I said, ‘OK, I better get off this field. I’m gonna be right in the middle of it.’”

That’s life nowadays for Scott, 43, who won two national championships at Clemson as Dabo Swinney’s co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach; spent three years as head coach at South Florida ; and is now “having a ball” working as a real estate agent a short drive from the same stadium where he helped make history.

But he hasn’t been swayed enough to explicitly rule out rejoining Swinney’s Clemson staff at some point in the future — something Tigers fans have been clamoring for ever since Scott was fired midway through his third season at USF in November 2022 and moved back to Clemson.

As he put in during a July 31 appearance on The Mickey Plyler Show : “The only firm decision that my wife and I have made after South Florida is that we’re going back and raising our kids in Clemson. So that’s the only thing I know 100%. … And, you know, we’ll see what happens.”

Jeff Scott’s new chapter

Scott’s name was in the news again ahead of Clemson’s 2024 season opener as he made that aforementioned radio appearance and an appearance on TigerNet’s Orange Crush Podcast with a business partner to discuss his new real estate passion.

Since moving his family back to Clemson in January 2023, Scott has started his own business, Haven Valley , which specializes in building customs houses in South Carolina and North Carolina mountain and lake regions (including Lake Keowee near Clemson).

Scott said diving into a brand new venture has been refreshing. He’d done nothing but football the past 20 years and has been around the sport his entire life, considering his father, Brad Scott , is a longtime coach who had stops at Florida State, South Carolina and Clemson.

His ace recruiting skills are also coming in handy.

“What I’ve learned in my year and a half of business outside of just the coaching profession is: If you do what you say you’re going to do, you have integrity, people can trust you, you call people back and you communicate, all of the sudden you’re in, like, the top 5%” of real estate agents, Scott said on The Roar. “It’s amazing to me.”

Scott’s pivot to real estate — a “ calling beyond the gridiron ,” as one of his websites puts it — has also given him significantly more free time to spend with his wife, Sara; his 8-year-old daughter, Savannah; and his 4-year-old son, Hunter. (He still jokes that coaching Hunter’s 4-and-under recreational soccer team last fall is “ the hardest coaching job I had .”)

“He loves what he’s doing,” said Swinney, who lives two doors from Scott in Clemson. “He’s having a ball. Anybody looking to build a house on Lake Keowee, call Jeff Scott. He’s your man. He’s ready to roll.”

Swinney grinned.

“You owe me for that, Jeff.”

Not done yet?

As fulfilling as it’s been, though, Scott readily acknowledges that coaching has “been in my blood my entire life” and he still occasionally feels the pull to return to the industry — something he’s previously said he’d “love” to do with the Tigers .

Scott, who spent 12 years at Clemson and rose to assistant coaching stardom as Swinney’s co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach, has made various appearances at Clemson events since returning (including a game last year and two preseason practices this month).

“The only firm decision that I’ve made about my career or my future is that we’re going to raise our kids right here in Clemson, and we’re really excited about that,” he told TigerNet on Aug. 9.

Since he returned, Scott said he and Swinney have even discussed how Swinney spent a few years out of college football, working as a real estate agent , after he was fired from his assistant coaching job with Alabama and before he took his next job at Clemson in 2003.

“You never know what happens,” Scott told the website.

For now, though, he’s still content pursuing a new passion off the field — and rooting for the Tigers in their season opener against Georgia in Atlanta later this month.

“Even though I only coached for 20 years, I’ve been a coach’s kid for 40 years,” Scott told The Roar. “So to be able to do something a little bit different in a place that I love has been really enjoyable to this point.”

Sign Up for The State, This Week