Dabo Swinney remembers all too well what happened the last time a Clemson team visited Kyle Field, the site of Saturday’s game between No. 2 Clemson at Texas A&M.

“I was a part of that butt whooping in ’04,” the Tigers’ head coach said Tuesday. “We couldn’t get home soon enough. We got destroyed out there.”

Clemson (1-0) did get destroyed. The Aggies defeated the Tigers 27-6 that evening and it was not even that close. Of course Swinney, who was Clemson’s wide receivers coach at the time, knew the Tigers were headed for a loss way before they stepped foot on Kyle Field.

“I remember it all too well. That’s the only time I had been to Texas for a football game as a player or as a coach,” he said.

For some reason, Clemson stayed an hour and a half away from College Station. In those days, the players wore their warm-up suits and when they got on the buses they discovered they had no air conditioning and it was nearly 100s degrees outside.

“I remember vividly getting off the bus and everybody had their pants pulled up, had their shirts rolled up, we looked like North Dallas Forty or something getting off the bus,” Swinney said. “We were a bad looking bunch. Everybody was sweating and in my mind I remember going, ‘This is fixin’ to be a long day.’ And it was. They absolutely kicked our tails all over the field that night.”

However, Swinney was impressed by the facility and the A&M fans that evening.

“It was a great experience to see that venue. It’s an incredible game-day environment,” he said. “One I know our guys are excited to play in. Hopefully, we can do a little better than we did fourteen years ago.”

As long as the Tigers have air conditioning on the buses, then they should be in good shape.

“Yes,” Swinney said when asked if the buses would have air conditioning.  “We are not staying that far either. We are pretty close. We are, I think, three miles away so we will have a little better plan.”