It’s true that as recently as the back end of the Charlie Weis era, Notre Dame football wasn’t particularly relevant. However, if Notre Dame falls into a ditch, history has shown that the football program quickly extricates itself from that unfavorable position and — like Touchdown Jesus — rises again in an Easter of the gridiron.
For Clemson University, there was no quick rescue after the 1991 ACC championship season produced by Ken Hatfield. After the brilliance of the 1980s — easily the best calendar decade in the history of the program — the well not only ran dry, but stayed dry. Year after excruciating year, the Tigers would do something (often spectacular) to somehow avoid winning the ACC. From 2005 through 2008, that also included missing the ACC Championship Game in the newly-created Atlantic Division.
Dabo Swinney did break through and win the Atlantic in 2009, but that was with a team which lost five games and then played in the Music City Bowl, the kind of bowl Clemson had been accustomed to playing, instead of a premium January destination. As the 2011 season approached, Swinney knew he had to Yabba-Dabo-do something to kick-start his program.
He recruited a heckuva lot better, yes. That always helps.
However, he also hired Chad Morris as his offensive coordinator.
The Tigers haven’t been the same since.
Energy, insight, accumulated wisdom — it takes persistence and patience to survive in a cutthroat profession long enough to derive the benefits of such resources. Swinney looked completely out of his depth when he first took the baton from Tommy Bowden. However, he grew on the job and was given time when a lot of people (yes, I was one of them) felt he needed some seasoning outside the BCS conferences (as they were referred to at the time). Swinney became a quick learner as a head coach, knowing where he had to shore up his program and realizing that he had to surround himself with the best assistants he could find.
Four years later, Clemson hasn’t ruled the roost in the ACC — that’s what Florida State has done — but the Tigers are no longer a program which squanders opportunities when they’re extended on a silver platter. Clemson now says, “Thank you very much,” takes the gift on the tray, and marches to a BCS (now “New Year’s Six”) bowl often enough for folks to take notice. The Tigers hold their own against the SEC, which is something not every ACC team can say.
Clemson has grown up… as has its head coach. It’s been a very impressive thing to see over the past several years.
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With all of that having been said, however, an eternal danger lurks just around the corner in college football and all of collegiate athletics: personnel alignments change quickly.
Assistants such as Chad Morris eventually leave. Players can’t stay forever. Transition is inherent to the business, not peripheral. Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins, Nuke Hopkins, Andre Ellington — they can’t be called upon.
It’s time to find out — with new play callers wearing headsets and Deshaun Watson now under center — if Clemson is ready to reaffirm its newfound place as a central college football power broker.
There’s never a better time to show that you’ve still got the mustard on the fastball than by hosting Notre Dame in prime time with all the College Football Playoff poker chips on the table. This game is a moment for Swinney, Watson, and the school they represent to show that everything which was established in 2011 can endure after those four formative seasons have come and gone. This is a chance to show that Clemson’s rise was more than Morris or the special players Dabo brought in to elevate the program from the realm of “almost” to the status of “inside the candy store, and no longer looking in from the outside.”
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Last year, Notre Dame went to another ACC lair, meeting Florida State on the mountaintop in what was one of the best-played games of the 2014 season. The game will forever be remembered by its controversial conclusion, but the quality of the preceding 59 minutes should not be forgotten. Had Notre Dame won that game, the Fighting Irish and Everett Golson might have handled November in a completely different way. Brian Kelly might have made the playoff, and we might be viewing the Irish in a completely different light.
Alas, we never got to find out.
Now, though, Notre Dame gets a second chance to register an October win on Saturday night against one of the ACC Atlantic’s two powerhouses. If he Irish can cross this threshold — which they were so close to doing a year ago in Tallahassee — their playoff prospects would brighten considerably. Sure, USC looms on the schedule, but the last time Steve Sarkisian won a defining game as a head coach was… never.
A Notre Dame win would give the Irish a strong chance of finishing the season with no more than one loss. An 11-1 Notre Dame team — given its box-office presence — would at the very least make it hard for the College Football Playoff Selection Committee to ignore the Irish on football’s version of Selection Sunday in December.
Can Clemson stand in Notre Dame’s way as Florida State did last year? The Seminoles parlayed that win into a playoff berth. If Clemson does the same, we won’t toss around — ever again — refrains such as, “But Dabo doesn’t have Chad Morris anymore” or “This is a different group of players.” Deshaun Watson will announce full ownership of this offense… and of the continuation of Tiger Football as a force to be reckoned with on a national scale.
Clemson arrived in 2011. If the Tigers beat Notre Dame on Saturday, they will show that they’re here to stay. They’re playing for a championship in 2015, these Tigers… but on many levels, they’re playing for something much more precious and enduring in the longer run of college football history.
