The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Clemson’s firm control of ACC loop
Dabo Swinney has built Clemson into an every-year power with regular College Football Playoff appearances and a recent national championship. None of that could’ve happened without first asserting unquestioned control of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The Tigers open practice this week as the overwhelming favorite to become the first team to win four straight ACC titles since Florida State’s romp through the 1990s. They also could become only the second power-conference team to win four straight league championship games.
“I didn’t sit back and say, ‘Well we’re Clemson and we’re going to go out there and everybody’s going to try to catch us,’” Swinney said during the ACC Kickoff preseason media days. “But I definitely envisioned Clemson being one of the best programs in the country, and I envisioned this league growing and becoming one of the most dominant leagues in the country.” Indeed, the Tigers’ rise helped the ACC climb onto level footing with its touted Southeastern Conference neighbor.
It wasn’t long ago that Clemson was chasing Florida State in the ACC’s power-heavy Atlantic Division . The Seminoles won three straight ACC titles from 2012-14 while going 26-1 against league teams — 3-0 against Clemson — and winning a national championship in the final BCS season of 2013. But the Tigers followed that with their own impressive run, giving the league a sustained stretch of top-flight success while putting the ACC alongside the SEC as the only leagues to reach all four playoffs.
Clemson is 25-2 against ACC teams in the past three seasons, with 18 wins by double-digit margins. The losses at home against Pittsburgh in 2016 and at Syracuse last year came by a combined four points. And last year’s 38-3 rout of thenNo. 7 Miami made Clemson only the fifth team to win at least three straight powerconference championship games since the SEC held the first in 1992, a group featuring FSU, Alabama in the SEC and Oklahoma in the Big 12.
Another December crown in Charlotte would allow Clemson to join Steve Spurrier’s Florida teams in the SEC (1993-96) as the only power-conference schools to win four straight league title games.
“It all goes together: their budgets are elite, their facilities are elite and they’re able to recruit and attract the elite players,” said Boston College coach Steve Addazio, whose Eagles face the Tigers annually in the Atlantic. “So they’re a ‘Have’ — that’s the best way I can say it.”
Clemson is on the verge of the ACC’s longest reign since Bobby Bowden’s Seminoles arrived in 1992 and won at least a share of the title for nine straight seasons, going 70-2 in the nineteam league.
John Swofford got a close look at those Seminoles, first as a competitor as North Carolina’s athletics director before becoming ACC commissioner in 1997. He told The Associated Press that Clemson’s run “does compare favorably” because today’s 14team league “is considerably better.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a league having a dominant team when that dominant team is without question a premier team nationally,” Swofford said. “And that’s exactly what we have in Clemson.”
Clelin Ferrell dismissed the questions.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Ferrell said. “You can talk about that as far as the past years, it might be a big gap. ... This 2018 team hasn’t done anything. There’s not really a gap as far as what we’ve done.”