Misery Index Week 11: Concerns in Clemson
It’s hard to have too many complaints as a fan when your team has won 23 of its last 25 games. Ask Clemson fans from basically any era, who have seen the highs and lows and flat incompetence of a few coaches along the way, and surely they would prefer what the program is now over what it once was.
But this being college football, with high stakes and small windows and Nick Saban blocking everybody’s way to the top, Clemson fans will absolutely feel the hangover of Pittsburgh’s 43-42 victory on Saturday even if they might have half-expected it.
The obvious truth is that Clemson’s season has been a textbook interpretation of Shakespeare’s famous line from Henry IV: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” It happened to Florida State in 2014 and Ohio State in 2015, and its emergence as a theme with Clemson has been obvious since the first game of the season. That Clemson, unlike those teams, didn’t actually win a national championship is immaterial. Even in their (narrow) defeat, the Tigers emerged from last season’s title game as the darlings of college football with all the magazine covers and flowery offseason profiles that typically come with the trophy.
The moment the championship game ended in January, the excitement wasn’t about what Clemson won or lost but rather a forward-focus to this season with Deshaun Watson and a full cast of characters coming back ready to wreak havoc on defenses every week.
But the encore on this stage is never as carefree as the entrance. As the scrutiny goes up and the pressure builds, players’ individual expectations start to inevitably unwind from the present to their potential multimillion-dollar futures.
Again, this isn’t unique to Clemson. It has happened over and over through the history of college football, and even Saban has directed blame to this phenomenon when his teams have come up short.
The good news for Clemson is there’s no way to deny or excuse it anymore. As Dabo Swinney ardently defended his team in sluggish victory after sluggish victory, the rhetoric felt a lot like someone who chooses to spray on cologne when they really need a shower. Underneath, the stink was still there.
Now it’s out in the open, and 9-1 Clemson is not out of this thing. Unlike Ohio State last year, which magically got right after its stunning loss to Michigan State, the Tigers still control their own destiny. If they beat Wake Forest, South Carolina and then likely Virginia Tech in the ACC championship game, they’ll probably be in the College Football Playoff again. If they can’t win that trifecta of games, they didn’t deserve it anyway.
For now, though, there has to be a lingering disappointment that the full potential fans saw for this team — and the history they hoped it would make — was probably not realistic. And who knows when that kind of opportunity is going to come around again.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/columnist/dan-wolken/2016/11/13/misery-index-week-11-clemson-rutgers-arkansas-kansas-north-carolina/93772472/
