Clemson makes history with No. 1 ranking in pre-season AP Top 25
Clemson has already made history before the 2019 U.S. college football season even starts, but it’s not the kind of history Tigers coach Dabo Swinney cares about.
Clemson is ranked No. 1 in the pre-season AP poll for the first time in school history, it was announced Monday. The Tigers are also ranked No. 1 in the preseason USA Today coaches poll, which came out earlier this month.
Swinney downplayed being pre-season No. 1 and said it’s really not much of an honour.
“Unless they bring us a trophy and tear the concrete out over there and put the pre-season champs up there, I don’t think we’re going to do that. So it just doesn’t matter,” Swinney said. “It’s just is a distraction for people to ask me questions about it because it just doesn’t matter.
Alabama is ranked No. 2, followed by Georgia, Oklahoma and Ohio State.
Clemson plays two opponents ranked in the pre-season AP top 25, facing No. 12 Texas A&M in Week 2 and No. 22 Syracuse in Week 3. The Tigers had previously been ranked as high as No. 2 in the pre-season twice — 2016 and 2018 — before being preseason No. 1 this year.
“I guess that means that people think we’ve got a good team coming back, and I guess that means that we were a good team last year, so I guess that’s a pro,” Swinney said. “I guess that beats not being ranked at all because everybody thinks you stink. I guess that’s the pro.”
While Clemson made history with its pre-season ranking, the Tigers also have a streak that is coming to an end. It has finished higher than its pre-season ranking in the AP poll each of the previous eight seasons. The best the Tigers can do this year is tie their No. 1 ranking.
“Can’t we finish like negative?” Swinney joked. “We’d be zero. I guess that’d be the next one. Super duper (one). Maybe we can tie it. We’d have to change the rhetoric.”