Can Tigers be Kings of the ACC, again?
By: will-vandervort July 2, 2015

On Thursday morning, Clemson Football’s official twitter account tweeted this below.

Though those numbers are impressive and are very true, there is one number that used to be on that list that is now no longer there. What is it?

From 1956, when they won their first ACC Championship, to 2012 no team in the ACC won more overall games, conference games and ACC Titles than the Tigers. Clemson owned 14 ACC Championships (13 outright), but in 2013 Florida State tied them for overall championships and then past them last year with their third straight ACC title.

 

Though Clemson owns the most wins in league history, it can no longer say it owns the conference. Since 1992, the Seminoles have won or shared 15 conference championships and have more overall wins and ACC wins than any other school.

In the process, they have broken just about every ACC Football record Clemson owned – consecutive titles, consecutive wins, consecutive home wins and consecutive road wins.

The Tigers have won one ACC Championship since FSU joined the conference.

Can Clemson take the conference back?

Since he became head coach in 2009, Dabo Swinney has the Clemson football program pointing in the right direction. The Tigers have won an ACC title since he took over—the first since 1991—and have played in two ACC Championship Games and tied the Seminoles for a third ACC Atlantic Division Title in 2012.

Clemson is 27-6 in the ACC since 2011, including its 38-10 victory over Virginia Tech in the 2011 ACC Championship Game. The Tigers are 20-1 in the last three years against everyone in the ACC not named Florida State.

In his first six years as a head coach, Swinney has won more games than any other coach in the history of the ACC, and that includes former Clemson coach Danny Ford. Under his direction, the Tigers have recorded wins similar to the ones Ford’s team use to win in the 1980s.

Clemson beat No. 7 Ohio State in the 2014 Orange Bowl and No. 9 LSU in the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl the year before the Orange Bowl win. Last year, he led the Tigers to their most dominating bowl victory off all-time in a 40-6 thrashing of No. 24 Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl.

The Tigers won 42 games from 2011-’14, the most victories by the Clemson program in a four-year stretch. Also, Clemson won at least 10 games all four years, the first time that has happened since 1987-’90 era.

Unfortunately for Clemson, despite all the success, Florida State has had even better success under Jimbo Fisher, who took over in 2010 as its head coach. Since then, the Seminoles have won the ACC three consecutive years and have played for the title in four off Fisher’s five years there.

FSU won the National Championship in 2013 and qualified for the first College Football Playoff last season. In the last three seasons the Seminoles have won 38 of 41 games, and before losing to Oregon in the Rose Bowl last January, they won 29 straight.

They have won 24 straight games against ACC opponents, including 21 straight in the regular season.

Once again the Tigers and the Seminoles are the favorites to win the ACC’s Atlantic Division in 2015 and the winner of their Nov. 7 game in Death Valley is predicted to win the ACC Championship.

Can the Tigers take back what they feel is rightfully theirs? Or will the Seminoles continue to bully the conference and throw the one-time Kings of the ACC to the side?

Football season can’t get here soon enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gabAzmDWbh0