During his 12 seasons as head coach of the Clemson Tigers, he captured five ACC titles and won six bowl games.
Ford's 1981 Clemson team completed a 12–0 season with a win in the Orange Bowl and was named the consensus national champion.
Ford coached as an assistant at Alabama and Virginia Tech before joining Charley Pell's staff at Clemson.
That game is more remembered, however, for an incident in which Buckeye coach Woody Hayes punched Clemson nose guard Charlie Bauman.
Nebraska was the third top-10 team upended by the Tigers that year, the others being defending national champion Georgia and North Carolina.
[2] Ford closed his career with a 27–7 win over West Virginia (and their All-America quarterback Major Harris) in the Gator Bowl.
While at Clemson, Ford defeated a number of coaches later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, including Dan Devine, Joe Paterno, Tom Osborne, Barry Switzer, Bobby Bowden, Vince Dooley, Don Nehlen, and Woody Hayes.
He led Arkansas to an SEC West championship in 1995 on the legs of Madre Hill and the defensive genius of Joe Lee Dunn, after emerging from two years under Crowe.
Ford proved to be a solid recruiter, as his replacement at Arkansas, Houston Nutt, went on to win 17 games in the 1998 (9–3) and 1999 (8–4) seasons combined, to include a 1998 SEC West co-championship and a Cotton Bowl championship on January 1, 2000, with a victory over Texas.