Around the ACC: Clemson Football

Some stories on Clemson and Tommy Bowden in particular. Amazing how a guy can go from the outhouse to the penthouse in less than a month. They want to hire the guy for president down here is SC (or so it seems).

Tommy's happy ending - the State.

Bowden made two important statements in those four wins. First, he proved in his fifth season that his teams can win big games. Also, he proved he can coach against the best. Those wins came against two highly regarded former NFL coaches - Virginia's Al Groh and Georgia Tech's Chan Gailey - and two of the college game's coaching legends - FSU's Bowden and USC's Lou Holtz. In all but the Virginia win, Bowden's teams were clearly better coached than his opponent.

Q&A with Bowden on the team and the upcoming season - insiders.

How has the momentum from last year affected your program and how do you think your team will respond this year?
Bowden: I'm anxious to see how it effects our two-a-days and the early part of our schedule and the toughness of our schedule. The way we finished last year we did some things that's never been done at Clemson. With the Georgia Tech margin of victory being the most in a 100 years, the Florida State victory was the highest ranked opponent ever, the Tennessee was the second highest ever, the South Carolina victory the most points ever scored. Those have never been accomplished by me or by this school so I don't know. I don't know how the team will respond. I think that's one of the challenges as to how they respond to a bigger bulls eye on their chest. And that's where you want to get to, and we aren't there just yet, but I'm anxious to see how much closer we are to getting there.

Happy Days here again for Bowden - the State.

The key to Clemson’s turnaround last season came on defense, Bowden said. When asked his goals for this season, Bowden focused on continuing the defense’s momentum. Clemson held its last four opponents, including Florida State and Tennessee, to 12 points and 79.8 yards rushing per game. During the first nine games, teams averaged 22.4 points and 154.8 rushing yards against the Tigers.

“I thought the defense elevated their level of play, and I thought the offense caught fire from how the defense performed,” Bowden said. “I’d like to start out against Wake Forest and Georgia Tech with the same kind of statistics that we carried over to those four games.”