In Dabo Swinney’s post game, on-field interview it struck me when he was taking about how amazing it was that “Lil’ ole Clemson” could do this... win another national championship over Alabama (and I’ll add over the likes of Texas, Florida, OSU, Michigan, PSU, etc. from that type of school in that type of conference).
I looked it up and see Clemson has 19,000 undergrads (same as Pitt) and it is not smack dab in the middle of Florida, Texas or California recruit heaven. It’s in a good, not great region and they’ve had major competition for all top local and regional recruits.
Their head coach came from another program and had zero head coaching experience when he was hired. He also wasn’t an overnight success there, needing to get better over time and first beat his rivals, then get to the national stage (and lose), before breaking through in recruiting and winning it all.
Their non-title “futility” ran ~30 years and the act of losing a game you should win spawned the term “Clemsoning” years ago and the term was used often by a frustrated fan base (and even some writers).
What does all this mean for Pitt and Pitt fans? Maybe nothing, or maybe that the impossible isn’t actually impossible after all.
I looked it up and see Clemson has 19,000 undergrads (same as Pitt) and it is not smack dab in the middle of Florida, Texas or California recruit heaven. It’s in a good, not great region and they’ve had major competition for all top local and regional recruits.
Their head coach came from another program and had zero head coaching experience when he was hired. He also wasn’t an overnight success there, needing to get better over time and first beat his rivals, then get to the national stage (and lose), before breaking through in recruiting and winning it all.
Their non-title “futility” ran ~30 years and the act of losing a game you should win spawned the term “Clemsoning” years ago and the term was used often by a frustrated fan base (and even some writers).
What does all this mean for Pitt and Pitt fans? Maybe nothing, or maybe that the impossible isn’t actually impossible after all.
