New Orleans – This entire college football season, the light has seemed to shine on the LSU Tigers. With their explosive and improved offense and physical defense, LSU has been fun to watch. They’ve easily been one of the most dominant teams in college football. With their rise, however, people seem to have forgotten about maybe the most dominant team in college football the last three or four seasons.
For an undefeated team and one that’s on a 29-game winning streak and are close to having back-to-back 15-0 seasons, it’s a bit strange that the Clemson Tigers are seemingly being overlooked this season. At times this season, Clemson has been unfairly maligned for playing a weak schedule, both in conference and out of conference. Which is a bit out of their hands considering how down in general the Atlantic Coast Conference as a whole has been this year, and Texas A&M underperformed to expectation. Clemson players are well aware of this perception and linebacker Isaiah Simmons addressed it today at media day.
“Ever since I’ve been at Clemson that’s how it’s been,” said Simmons. “We always get the, “We don’t play anybody,” this and that. But I feel like we do pretty good when we get these games where we (indiscernible) somebody and be able to say it. And at the end of the day everybody puts on their cleats and jerseys and helmets the same as everybody else. So you can say we don’t play anybody and make that a factor of what you said, but, I don’t know, that doesn’t really bother us; we’re used to being that team.”
Simmons followed that up by saying, “It’s funny because there’s an article that was like how 13-0 Clemson team wouldn’t make the playoffs. So people don’t really want (indiscernible) anyways. So we get used to it. We’re like the red-headed stepchild in other groups. There’s nothing wrong with it with me.”
Clemson safety Tanner Muse and a couple other Clemson players think the main reason why they are being overlooked as a team by people, are because sometimes people generally are not interested in repetitiveness and are always searching for the next best thing.
“I think when you look at it, everybody likes the new face, you know,” said Muse. “Alabama has been the SEC team for a long time. Now you got LSU beating them. Everybody wants to see a new face up on the pedestal. Not a lot of people like repetitiveness. They want something new, something fresh. So I understand it because we’ve been there when we were the underdog, everybody’s like yeah, go Clemson, go Clemson. Now everybody’s like, ah, we’re kind of tired of Clemson. I understand it, but at the end of the day we gotta do what we do. I’m still here. I still want to win, so we’re just going to do our best.”
When asked if being overlooked has led to any added motivation, a couple said not really but a couple of players including Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence said that it does but they are trying to focus on themselves.
“Maybe a little bit, but we’ve just been trying to focus on us and what we want to do, our goals and just believing we can do it more so than thinking about them and the recognition they’re getting.”
With the championship fast approaching, Clemson will be able to prove any doubters wrong for overlooking them and jumping on the next best thing. The 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship will take place on Monday, January 13th at 8PM EST at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The game will be televised on ESPN.
Written by Erik Slaby
