It was a move of necessity. His family had no money after his father’s business failed when Dabo was in high school. Ervil Swinney quickly plummeted into a cycle of domestic abuse and alcoholism. “I come from the most screwed-up dysfunctional situation,” Swinney said. “You’ve got violence. Police at your house. Your dad’s gone. Nowhere to live.”

The old Fountainbleau Apartments in Tuscaloosa were typical college housing – low slung and well worn, a humble yet efficient place to lay your head and maybe raise some hell just steps from the campus of the University of Alabama.

In the late 1980s it was a preferred spot for many Crimson Tide football players, which added an extra layer of social life to a complex already teeming with loud music and crowded kegs.

For Dabo Swinney it represented dirt-cheap housing, which still was more he could really afford. He and a friend from back home in Pelham, Ala. each paid $130 a month for Unit 81, a simple two bedroom. He was a sophomore, attempting to become the first member of his family to graduate from college while surviving as a walk-on wide receiver for the vaunted football program.

He was also bringing to college a rather unusual accessory … his mother, Carol, a third roommate in an apartment not exactly designed for parents.

Yes, Dabo Swinney brought his mom to college with him.

“He did,” Carol told Yahoo Sports with a smile. “And I wouldn’t trade anything for it. I wouldn’t. It was really some of the happiest times of my life because we were together, we were safe and we were happy.”

Carol was talking on New Year’s Eve outside the Clemson locker room at SunLife Stadium, school-colored confetti clinging to her shirt. It was a long, long way from the Fountainbleau. Her son coaches the top-ranked Tigers now. After a dominating victory over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, they’re headed to the national title game to play no less than Alabama, where Dabo eventually earned a football scholarship, played on the 1992 national champions and earned a degree in commerce and business administration.

It’s also the place that all those years ago he dared to buck almost every imaginable teenage norm and crowd into a room with his mother.

“I’d feel bad for the other guy, ‘I’ve got a roommate … and his mom,'” Swinney said with a laugh.

It was a move of necessity. His family had no money after his father’s business failed when Dabo was in high school. Ervil Swinney quickly plummeted into a cycle of domestic abuse and alcoholism.

“I come from the most screwed-up dysfunctional situation,” Swinney said. “You’ve got violence. Police at your house. Your dad’s gone. Nowhere to live.”

Dabo and Carol were essentially homeless his senior year of high school, bouncing around from friends’ couches, the floor of grandma’s public housing unit and sometimes just sleeping side-by-side in their car.

“I was humiliated,” Swinney said. “I was prideful. I didn’t want people to know we weren’t this perfect family. But you reach a point where you just don’t care anymore.”

Not caring meant not giving up on college no matter what it took. Dad was lost. His older brothers were dealing with similar trouble. He and his mother could hardly afford one place though let alone two. They only owned one bed, which meant they had to share it. They were hustling jobs, milking financial aid and maxing out credit cards that arrived in the mail just to pay tuition.

This was just how it was going to be, the two of them against the world.

“My son and I were always very close,” Carol said. “He always looked after me. He was protective. He was like that as a child. He took care of his mom.”

So in a bizarro “Old School” way, a petite, devoutly Christian, 40-something woman waded into the Tuscaloosa college scene. She rose at 6 a.m. to drive to an $8 an hour job as a sales clerk at the Parisian department store back in suburban Birmingham before returning at night.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on sports.yahoo.com – however, the original URL is no longer available.]