DURHAM — A day after Tommy Bowden stepped down as coach of the Clemson Tigers midway through the 2008 season, Duke coach David Cutcliffe said it's always difficult to hear of any of his fellow coaches having to leave jobs or getting fired.

Cutcliffe, a father of two daughters and two sons, said he has the most sympathy for the children who have to pick up and move. Cutcliffe talked about Bowden and the nomadic life of a coach during his Tuesday press conference. It's included in this audio clip.

Today we debut a new feature on Talking Points, the Tuesday Top Five.

The inaugural list is inspired by Clemson’s decision to dump Tommy “We tried everything” Bowden on a Monday, only two days after he announced he was demoting starting QB Cullen Harper, the preseason ACC player of the year, on the heels of a dismal 12-7 loss at Wake Forest.

It’s rare a college football coach is fired in midseason, even rarer that he is not allowed to play out the string before turning the clipboard over to his successor.

In honor of Bowden, here are the Top Five Midseason Coaching Changes:

Clemson coach Tommy Bowden resigned on Monday with six games left in the season, the school announced after multiple media outlets broke the story Monday afternoon.

Receivers coach Dabo Swinney will coach the remainder of the season.

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UNC: It’s not that UNC beat Notre Dame, a team that won three games in 2007, it’s that the Heels did so without Brandon Tate, their best player.
So they’re 5-1 — and were without quarterback T.J. Yates for three of those wins and without Tate for one.

After Thursday's truly craptacular performance in the national spotlight, the second this season for Clemson and coach Tommy Bowden, it's fairly obvious Bowden hates the media.

Why else would the Tigers coach go to such great lengths to make us look so bad? Very clever, Tommy, sacrificing your own career to show the rest of the world just to show how dense we really are. Brilliant. You got us.

And at this point, I'm coming clean. I owe every reader an apology. I'm sorry. I picked Clemson to win the ACC and ranked the Tigers in the top 10 (No. 7) of my preseason AP Top 25.