The 1981 college football season marked a very different time in the life of the sport.
At this point in its evolution, college football was defined by defenses and by the old maxims about running the ball, playing defense, and being fundamentally sound in the kicking game. The poll-and-bowl system wasn’t all that close to its deathbed. Television coverage had not yet exploded into the full-scale buffet we enjoy today; the courts had not yet transformed that part of a college football fan’s experience. College GameDay was still years away from arriving.
The Fiesta Bowl had not yet staged its first New Year’s Day game, becoming one of the bigger bowls on the schedule and emerging from its much more humble beginnings.
Joe Paterno was untouched by scandal and enjoying a richly fruitful period at Penn State, one year before his first national title.
Ties were allowed. Overtime would not arrive for another decade and a half.
The Ivy League was about to make the long-term downshift to a lower division of competition, but 1981 marked the storied conference’s last go-round at the Division I-A level.
Only 16 bowls existed. Other than New Year’s Day of 1982 and New Year’s Eve of 1981, only one other day — December 19 — featured more than one bowl game on the schedule.
Yet, while 1981 was so different relative to the present day and age, one common thread links the 2015 season with this story, authored 34 years ago:
Clemson stood above the crowd during the regular season, going unbeaten when all other teams failed to do so.
You could advance the opinion that Clemson was the beneficiary of a weak Atlantic Coast Conference in 1981, similar to 2015. In 1981, only North Carolina emerged as a particularly strong ACC foe. In 2015, Florida State and North Carolina were very solid teams, but beyond them, the ACC lacked heft. Pittsburgh tailed off in the final month of the season. Louisville never put the pieces together. Georgia Tech crashed and burned. Miami impressively avoided a collapse in terms of the entirety of its season, but when the Hurricanes played good teams, they normally got humiliated.
It’s easy to diminish the 2015 Tigers, much as it was easy to downplay what Danny Ford’s team achieved in 1981. Yet, a fuller look at those national champions shows that they earned every last ounce of glory.
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In the person of Homer Jordan, Clemson cultivated a quarterback who — like Deshaun Watson — was a slippery and evasive scrambler with an ability to make enough improvisational plays in the right moments. However, beyond this ability, Jordan wasn’t as prodigiously skilled as Watson. Whereas 2015 Clemson scored at least 30 or more points in eight of its last nine games, the 1981 Tigers hit 30 or more on only two occasions against FBS opponents (then known as Division I-A teams). Jordan didn’t litter the stat sheet with diamonds the way Watson does now; that said, Jordan didn’t need to, either — not with the defense which accompanied him and 1982 Orange Bowl hero Perry Tuttle.
How great was Clemson’s defense under the watch of Ford and the play-calling of coordinator Tom Harper?
The Tigers allowed just 11 touchdowns in 12 games. They didn’t allow their second touchdown of the season until October 17 against Duke… in a game they won by 28 points.
Clemson’s defense played its best games in the biggest games of the season. The Tigers kept Herschel Walker and Georgia out of the end zone in a 13-3 victory against the Bulldogs, who entered the 1982 Sugar Bowl at No. 2, right behind No. 1 Clemson. The Tigers — when visiting No. 8 North Carolina in the ACC’s 1981 game of the year — kept the Tar Heels out of the end zone and made a late defensive stand to preserve a 10-8 victory which opened the door to both a conference and national championship in the Palmetto State.
How great was Clemson’s defense in 1981? A third-quarter touchdown allowed to South Carolina — creating a 15-13 score — was as late or as significant a score as the Tigers allowed all season long. Only Nebraska’s early touchdown in the 1982 Orange Bowl could coexist in that particular conversation. Clemson simply gave opponents nothing of consequence in second halves and especially fourth quarters. Throughout the season, touchdowns scored against Clemson were little more than statistical window dressing, rarely if ever important in a larger competitive context.
In the Orange Bowl, Nebraska scored midway through the fourth quarter when trailing 22-7. The Huskers created a 22-15 score, but Clemson then proceeded to hold the ball for almost all of the final six minutes.
This defense was a brick wall from opening day until the end of the Orange Bowl. Beyond that, however, Clemson was also able to change games with its defense. A forced turnover sealed the North Carolina win in the final two minutes. A couple of takeaways, combined with strong special teams play, enabled Clemson to start multiple Orange Bowl drives deep in Nebraska territory, including two inside the Huskers’ 30. Those drive starts led to a touchdown and two field goals in a low-scoring contest. Clemson needed just a modest pinch of offense to beat Nebraska, given the way its defense was performing. When Tuttle caught a touchdown pass from Jordan to cap a long touchdown march in the third quarter, the Tigers’ offense did what it needed to do.
Better than Nebraska and Tom Osborne and Mike Rozier on a neutral field.
Better than Georgia and Vince Dooley and Herschel at home.
Better than a nasty North Carolina defense on the road in Chapel Hill.
Clemson met and passed several supreme tests along the way in 1981. The Tigers answered the bell each time they were challenged.
The composition of the ACC might have given Danny Ford’s team some breathers on the schedule, but Clemson was good enough and strong enough that it took full advantage of the slate and didn’t allow a lot of drama to enter into its march to history.
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One shudders to think how College Football Twitter would have regarded the 1981 Clemson Tigers.
BUT THEY PLAYED IN A WEAK CONFERENCE!
THEY CAUGHT GEORGIA ON AN OFF DAY!
WHAT IF THEY PLAYED EVERY WEEK IN THE 1981 SEC?
The 2015 Clemson Tigers are four-point underdogs to Oklahoma in this year’s Orange Bowl, which conveys a lack of respect to Dabo Swinney’s team. If the 1981 national champions and today’s Tigers have a common bond beyond the university they share, it’s that it’s so easy for casual fans to downgrade or dismiss an ACC champion.
Say what you want about Clemson in 2015. When you look back at the Clemson team which won the school’s only national football championship to date, don’t be miserly in handing out praise. The 1981 Tigers — with the consistency of their defense — answered every tough question posed to them by a number of formidable foes in different circumstances.
