By Will Vandervort.

So Clemson has a countdown clock for the South Carolina game. Why are there some out there that are making this such a big deal?

Clemson fans have been saying for the last three or four years that Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney needs to take the South Carolina game a little more serious than he has, but when he decides to put more of a focus on beating his arch rival than before, the media and others start attacking his reasoning.

The fact is simple, besides winning a national championship, Swinney’s Tigers have accomplished as much as some of Danny Ford’s great teams of the 1980s. His teams have recorded three straight 10-win seasons, they’ve finished ranked in the top 10 in each of the last two years, they’ve won an ACC Championship, they’ve won an Orange Bowl, they’ve beaten Georgia, they’ve won prominent bowl games, while knocking off prominent head coaches and big-time programs along the way.

The only thing Swinney’s program has not accomplished in the last five years – it has not beaten the Gamecocks. So why get on the guy for putting an emphasis on something they have not been able to do?

“Yeah, we have a countdown clock. But we’ve always had one,” Swinney said earlier this week from the ACC Football Kickoff in Greensboro, N.C. “We have always had one for the next opponent, but the coaches wanted to put one in for that particular game. It’s really just based on the fact that when you walk in our team room every day and you look at our team goals, we’ve hit every team goal on there in the past five years with the exception of winning our state championship.

“So it’s obviously something we’ve got to work on – it’s a high priority. We want to get it done.”

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But putting an emphasis on beating the Gamecocks is not going to change Clemson’s philosophy, though. It still wants to be known for being a national program that can compete and beat the best teams in the country – something it has proved with wins over Auburn, Georgia, LSU and Ohio State in the previous three seasons.

But from 1976-2008, the Tigers owned South Carolina as they compiled a 24-8-1 record against their archrivals in those 33 years. Clemson fans loved that era, but what did beating the Gamecocks really accomplish in most of those years?

Former Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden won seven of his nine meetings against the Gamecocks, but what did that really do for the program other than give fans bragging rights? Clemson did not win an ACC Championship, did not win 10 games in a season and did not finish inside the top 10 nationally following any of those seven victories.

The main objective at Clemson, since Swinney took over especially, is to win championships and beat the best programs it can along the way. These South Carolina Gamecocks fall into that line of thinking more than the USC program ever has before.

The Gamecocks have not only beat the Tigers the last five seasons, but over the last four years they have won 42 games, including three straight 11 win seasons and finished in the top 10 three straight years. This isn’t your grandfather’s or even you father’s Gamecocks. This is a top 10 program that Swinney and the Clemson program desperately want to beat.

“Our philosophy is the same,” Swinney said. “Every week, whoever we’re playing, that’s the biggest opponent. When the game is over, the season starts tomorrow. That’s what we always talk about.

“But (not beating USC) certainly is something that has really been a painful part of our program for the last five years from an in-state standpoint, but also nationally. We finished seventh in the nation this year and they finished fourth. That game is very important from a state pride standpoint, just like it always has been, but it’s become very important for our bigger goals, as well, from a national standpoint.”

And there is nothing wrong with focusing on that so let’s keep the countdown going.