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The Clemson Tigers have met the Ohio State Buckeyes in a Fiesta Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal. It happened three years ago, in 2016, and Dabo Swinney got the better of Urban Meyer in a blowout which propelled the Tigers to their first national championship since 1981. Yet, that wasn’t the only time Clemson has played Ohio State in a signature bowl game this decade.
If you were to trace the path Clemson took to this 2019 playoff semifinal against Ohio State, the short journey began against Georgia Tech in very late August, but the longer path included another bowl game against Ohio State. It was the 2014 Orange Bowl against the Buckeyes, at a time when Clemson was still trying to find its footing.
Remember the 2013 season? Clemson was very good, but Florida State was great. The Tigers still lived in the shadow of the Seminoles and were waiting for the breakthrough which would transform the program. Clemson began to move upward in the college football world in the 2012 Peach Bowl (yeah, it was called the Chick-Fil-A Bowl at the time; I don’t care…). A victory over LSU, one year after the Orange Bowl embarrassment suffered against West Virginia, gave Dabo clear proof that his program was headed in the right direction. The 2014 Orange Bowl, at the end of the 2013 season, needed to sustain what the 2012 season and 2012 Peach Bowl had begun to build.
Dabo and Clemson got what they needed, a victory over Urban Meyer. Thus continued Clemson’s penchant for winning big bowl games this decade. The Tigers have lost only one bowl game since the 2012 Orange Bowl disaster against West Virginia. That was the 2018 Sugar Bowl against Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals. All the other bowls have been victories: The 2012 Peach, the 2014 Orange, the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl against Oklahoma, the 2015 Orange Bowl against Oklahoma, the 2016 Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State, the 2018 Cotton Bowl against Notre Dame.
Clemson has been brilliant in bowl games, and equally brilliant against Ohio State, forging two victories which have been essential in stitching together a decade which started in uncertainty, grew in quality, and has reached its summit at the very end of this 10-year period. Clemson is now the dominant program in college football, the team everyone trusts to raise its standard in the most important moments.
An ACC season free of challenges and crises except for one moment — the fourth quarter against North Carolina — has allowed Clemson to fly under the radar. That existence is no more. The Tigers are now center stage, precisely where they expected to be all offseason and all through summer training camp. This is what Clemson plays for these days. This is what Clemson demands of itself.
Once more — as in 2014 and 2016 — Ohio State is the opponent in a proving-ground moment for the Dabo Dynasty. It doesn’t even feel like a time to be nervous. It feels like a time to do what comes very naturally to Clemson: Win big in a playoff semifinal.
The winning margin was 20 points over Oklahoma in 2015. It was 31 points over Ohio State in 2016. It was 27 points over Notre Dame in last year’s Cotton Bowl semifinal.
Time to pack a suitcase and show up for work. Time for Clemson to do what it did versus Ohio State on two previous occasions this decade: Eclipse one of college football’s most storied programs, thereby showing how much Clemson is different from the program we once knew at the start of this decade.
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