Better Know an ACC Opponent: Clemson

LIBERATE HOWARD'S ROCK BACK TO CALIFORNIA

In case you’ve blissfully forgotten, the Pac-12 is dead and Cal is now in a conference named after the other side of the country. If you’re reading this, it means that this new reality is not a deal breaker for you. Over the rest of the off-season, we’ll profile each and every member of this conference that Cal has joined, that will definitely 100% exist it its current form for years if not decades.

Previously: Boston College

Give me the basics

Clemson University is a public land grant school founded in 1889 as an agricultural school in the small town of Clemson, on the former land of . . . gulp . . . John C. Calhoun’s plantation. Clemson, to their credit, have removed Calhoun’s name from the university.

Now, the university is the 2nd largest by enrollment in South Carolina, but it’s still one of those delightful college towns where the capacity of the football stadium dwarfs that of the town itself.

Meanwhile, they have been members of the ACC since 1953, and with such a long and storied history in the conference I have no doubt that Clemson and their fans will fight to preserve their ACC membership for years to come.

Do they have any relevant history with Cal?

Not a ton – there has been just ONE football game between Cal and Clemson. But that one is a doozy – the 1992 Citrus Bowl, arguably the single high point of Cal’s modern college football history. The ’91 Bears were a narrow 7 point loss against co-national champ Washington away from a Pac-10 title, and they ended the season in style with a 37-13 win over the ACC champion Tigers.

On the basketball side of the ledger, Cal’s most prominent matchup came in a post-season tournament championship game! Granted, that game was the NIT championship in 1999, but still. Sean Lampley led the Bears to a 61-60 win in Madison Square Garden, in a game that felt like the most important thing in the world to a 14-year-old-Nick. Banners fly forever, baby!

You may remember me from such Pac-12 teams as:

Clemson is a football-first school with a long history of good-but-flawed performances, followed by a recent history of success on a level that only a few programs have ever experienced . . . which is to say that there is not a great west coast analog for Clemson. They most remind me of Oregon, in the sense that Oregon was always a program that was there and you noticed, but now Oregon is in your face and you can’t drive around without seeing a big old O on the back of a gigantic SUV. Before Dabo/Nike, you could get away with not paying a ton of attention to Clemson/Oregon. Now? Not any more.

I want to get on their good side. I should agree with them about:

“I know Florida State will claim they’re the class of the ACC, but they’ve only won one title this century, so who are they kidding?”

“Maybe South Carolina should try being good in football before they start pretending they’re the real USC”

I want to troll them incessantly. I should make fun of them for:

I mean, it’s gotta be Dabo, right? The man who is paid eight figures a year to coach football is perhaps the most prominent voice against allowing players to profit off their own talents. The hypocrisy is too ripe not to get some digs in.

What should I know about their current coaches?

Well, we covered Dabo above, but I can’t wait for the guy who built is program in “God’s Name, Image, and Likeness” to have to play a game in what outsiders understand to be the capitol of godless America.

Longtime basketball coach Brad Brownell looks a lot like Dabo Swinney if Dabo had way better hair. He’s been at Clemson forever and is almost exactly .500 in ACC play (128-126) across 14 seasons, which probably tells you where basketball falls on the pecking order in Clemson.

Which alumni keep them stuck in the past?

Well, the whole “three national titles within the last decade” thing means that nobody is going to be forgetting how good Clemson has been at football recently, and the NFL is full of former Tigers as a result. But if you want to pull a name from the past, William “Refrigerator” Perry is a fun callback.

On the basketball side, their most successful alum is probably Horace Grant, and who doesn’t love the man who rocked goggles like none before and none since.

Which alumni will they pretend they’ve forgotten?

I’d bet that there are a lot of Clemson fans who have complicated feelings about Deshaun Watson’s legal troubles and would prefer to believe the best about him. But that pales in comparison to Strom Thurmond, human avatar of segregation. Gross.

What’s their school tradition that they take way too seriously?

Did you know that Howard’s Rock was STOLEN from CALIFORNIA by a DASTARDLY Clemson fan? Yep, a pretty unremarkable hunk of quartz was taken from Death Valley National Park (because Clemson’s stadium, elevation 725 feet, is called Death Valley) and has become a totem for the Tigers.

Naturally, we actual Californians have a more natural claim to this chuck of mineral, which means that it should obviously become a trophy handed to whomever wins the next Cal/Clemson game and continuously thereafter. If Clemson doesn’t agree to these conditions then they are CLEARLY frightened of their new natural rivals from Berkeley.

(Having your team run down a hill surrounded by fans to enter the stadium is pretty awesome though.)

What non-revenue sport do they care about most?

Clemson men’s soccer has seen plenty of success – they’re the current reigning national champs, with four total national championships to their name. Prominent alumni include former USMNT members Stu Holden and Oguchi Onyewu, so I’d like to extend my thanks to Clemson for the USA’s 2-0 win over Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup, when Onyewu had an estimated 3,618 clearances of Spanish crosses into the box.

Should I go see Cal play a game there?

Pros: historic stadium, major crowd, years of historic football culture. Also I’ve talked to a few fans who went to the Citrus Bowl in ‘92 and all of them said that Clemson fans were very very nice. And I can only assume that you’d have plenty of options to sample some South Carolina BBQ.

Cons: It’s a tiny town in the far northwest corner of South Carolina that’s not particularly close to a major airport.

In other words, you’re going for a football game and probably not a lot more, and the act of getting there might get complicated. While in town, you could visit the John C. Calhoun house and library if you’re into that kind of thing. For my money the best combo trip would include some hiking in the Blue Ridge portion of the Appalachian Mountains, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park is only a two hour drive away, which is actually much closer than the four hour drive to get to the Atlantic Ocean.

Atlanta is also only about two hours away, but that’s a topic for our introduction to Georgia Tech.

Is Cal better than them at sports right now?

Well . . . um . . . Clemson football is coming off a 9-4 season that represents their worst season in 14 years. Would Cal fans spend literal weeks basking in the glow of a 9-4 season? So really, who’s to say which program is better?

Of course, Cal football doesn’t play Clemson until 2026. Clemson’s most recent high school recruiting class was good but not elite - will that be enough with Dabo staying stubborn and completely ignoring the transfer portal? Will Clemson fail to return to national title contender status as a result?

As mentioned above, Clemson MBB is far from a power in the ACC, but Clemson did just made their first run to the Elite Eight since 1980. Granted, they were an unremarkable 11-9 in ACC play, but they beat Arizona in the Sweet 16 so they have my gratitude. They’re expected to take a step back next year after losing a lot of seniors from this team and will probably be a middle of the pack team right along side Madsen’s Bears.

Clemson women’s basketball has made one NCAA tournament in the last 22 years, which is also the only time they have finished with a winning record in the ACC in the last 22 years, and they just got a new coach as a result.