Clemson vs. Georgia: A look back at a classic rivalry

Clemson University

SB Nation has a long retrospective on the Clemson-Georgia football rivalry that is well worth your time. A taste:

More than just geography dictated from the beginning that the two teams would be rivals, though the spirit of animosity between them certainly was stoked by the fact that scarcely 70 miles separate the Athens and Clemson campuses. The history of the series stretches back to the earliest days of both football programs, which sprang from a common fountainhead: Walter Riggs, who founded Clemson football, learned the sport as a student at Auburn, where he played for George Petrie, who learned the sport as a student at Johns Hopkins, where he acquired his passion for the game with classmate Charles Herty, who founded Georgia football.

Read the whole thing.

Clemson: The best stadium in America?

Photo courtesy Clemson Athletic Department.

Everybody using the hashtag #clemson on Twitter today is linking to this year-old 125-slide click-bait photo gallery that "power-ranks" the best college football stadiums. The reason? Clemson is No. 1:

Known nationwide as "Death Valley," this venue is the best place in the country to enjoy a college football game.It seats 80,301 and was built in 1942. The stadium will be filled with orange, as the crowd loves to support their Tigers. There are not many fans in the country that are more passionate about their team than this group. When Clemson is playing well and the game is going good, the noise in here is as loud as it gets in college football.

Is it me, or is that a pretty generic description? I guess it's cool that Bleacher Report loves Death Valley, but even I don't believe it's the country's greatest football venue. Top 20? Definitely. Better than LSU, Notre Dame or Ohio State? I'm not sure. Then again, this is coming from a writer who ranks Kenan Stadium at North Carolina, one of the most beautiful on-campus settings in the country, far below the crappy stadiums at N.C. State, Wake Forest and Maryland.

Twitter smack talk

I like it:

Ranked SEC teams have only lost seven games outside the league in the last two years, and three of them have been to #Clemson.
— Steven Bradley (@stevenbradley3) July 30, 2013

Clemson has two more chances to beat SEC teams this year. Will they do it?

The ACC coaching trap door

Frank Howard: I met him when I was a kid. Never heard 

anyone curse more in my life.

Caulton Tudor has an interesting column examining how the ACC has been unfriendly to football coaches through the years. He mentions Clemson's Frank Howard, Charley Pell and Ken Hatfield.

Along the way, Tudor also makes it clear that football drove the birth of the league:

It may seem illogical these days, but the ACC was formed in 1953 explicitly for the purpose of improving its member schools' football fortunes. Basketball had nothing to do with it. Only two founding schools – Duke and N.C. State – even put any sort of unusual emphasis on basketball. Eight schools broke away from other leagues in order to create a regional football operation that was intended to match similarly sized leagues in wins, national attention and ticket sales. Basketball quickly took control ...

I don't think many people are aware of that.

Clemson fans are among the country's most engaged

We laugh at your mockery, ESPN. Why? Because Clemson fans are the 20th most engaged supporters in the country -- and the No. 1 group in the ACC, according to a study by TicketCity. (Florida State ranked 22nd and Virginia Tech was 25th.) How did they determine that?

Fan engagement is evaluated in terms of the following metrics. The data is based on the 2012 season, excluding bowl games. Each metric was given a corresponding weight, listed in bold, which was determined based on how indicative the metric is of fan activity. For example, home attendance and ticket price are both weighted higher because they are a better direct reflection of home team behavior. Similarly, online metrics are not weighted as high as offline metrics because they reflect only the university-sanctioned social channel and do not account for other fan communities.

A famous coach from that other football sums up how Clemson fans feel: "Football is not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that."

Who'll win the ACC: Media says Tigers, Vegas says Seminoles

Interesting dichotomy:

ACC media picked Clemson to win the conference by a wide margin, giving the Tigers 95 of 120 votes. It’s a different story in Las Vegas where the LVH SuperBook opened Florida State as the 5-to-4 favorite and Clemson at 2-to-1.

The Vegas oddsmakers think Florida State's defense will be the difference. We'll find out on Oct. 19, won't we?

Clemson's unis: Among the worst of the BCS era?

Streeter Lecka, Getty Images

That's according to Bleacher Report:

If you could take any two colors on the color wheel, combine any two letters from ROY G BIV's name, orange and violet would probably be the least palatable option.The Tigers' jerseys in this combo aren't violet, but actually a darker, uglier, less complimentary shade. It looks more like blue mixed with purple mixed with black. ...

I don't expect the creators of click-bait photo galleries to do much research, but if they had, they'd have learned that this color scheme is part of Clemson's long football history:

The orange and purple began when Walter Merritt Riggs formed Clemson’s first football team in 1896. Because Riggs had come from Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (later renamed Auburn), he borrowed ideas from their team colors, orange and purple, and their mascot, the Tiger. 

I'll admit that I'm not crazy about this pairing, but it looks better than the purple jersey/purple pants combo.

Back-in-the-day Clemson photos

Clemson Girl is highlighting a post from the Tiger Pregame Show blog that features old photos of downtown Clemson and environs.

There are even some from the 1920s. Pretty neat.

PHOTOS: Former Tigers in the NFL

Orange and White has a nifty photo gallery of all the former Clemson players who are currently on NFL rosters. Check it out.