Dom Capers has happy memories of his time at Clemson.
Dom Capers hasn’t exactly missed the bus trips, according to Charlotte.
However, he hasn’t completely lost the sensation either.
Since Clemson was the location of “home” games during the franchise’s inaugural season in 1995, the senior defensive assistant for the Panthers is already imagining what it will be like when the team returns to campus for this year’s Fan Fest.
Capers recently commented, “It’ll be fun for me to go back there,” from his office in Bank of America Stadium. The audience provided excellent support, and we were trying things out for the first time.
“And it’ll bring back a lot of really good memories.”
Everything was brand-new when the Panthers played there in their maiden season. Starting with the squad, which was awarded an expansion franchise in 1993. And a lot of adjustment along with a lot of excitement accompanied that new.
They trained at Winthrop University in Rock Hill as the stadium in Charlotte was still being built. It took until the very end to decide on the tiny detail of game location; Columbia was considered before an agreement was reached to hold the inaugural season at Clemson. That meant that every Saturday, the travel home would be a little bit longer, especially on the way home.
“I’ve mentioned many times that the joke between the players was the only difference between playing at home and playing the 49ers on the road was a hot meal and a couple of flight attendants,” Capers said with a laugh. “Because it took the same amount of time to fly to San Francisco as it did the bus down to Clemson.”
That joke has gotten nearly as much mileage as the buses over the years, but it’s funny because it was true.
Players would load up at Winthrop on a Saturday afternoon and choose buses in part based on the movies that would be shown to kill time — at least two and a half hours, but often more based on traffic and road construction (some things still haven’t changed since 1995). Those trips often stretched past three hours on the way home since the egress from a smaller college town back to the city wasn’t as smooth as it is now.
