The Clemson Insider went back and ranked Clemson’s 25 best teams of all-time.

What classifies a certain team as one of the best? Of course winning a championship—national or conference—will be the first qualification. The other qualifications are overall record, national ranking and where they fell in the conference standings.

We continue our rankings with the No. 11 team on our list:

The 1902 Tigers (6-1, 5-1 SIAA, SIAA Champions)

When some of Clemson’s greatest teams are mentioned, no one brings up the 1902 Tigers. Why? I’m not sure. There is very little mention of them in any of the history books.

This was John Heisman’s third Clemson team, and it was one of his best. Clemson finished the year with a 6-1 record and claimed its second Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association Championship (SIAA).

That year, the Tigers routed Georgia (36-0), beat Auburn (16-0) and took down Tennessee (11-0) to claim its second SIAA crown. Victories like that in one season in this day and age could win a team a national championship.

The reason the 1902 team did not make our top 10 is because its lone defeat came to rival South Carolina, in what was the most infamous game in the history of the rivalry.

Col. Charles S. Roller, Jr., who was the football coach at Furman at the time, was the only referee for the Clemson-South Carolina game. Bronco Armstrong, a famous Yale player and official, was supposed to be the umpire, but he was involved in a railroad accident on his way to Columbia, and he was not going to make it to the game in time.

The result, not a single penalty was called in the Gamecocks’ stunning 12-6 upset. There was already bad blood between the two schools and what happened on the football field that afternoon did not help matters. During the annual parade for the winning team the next night, a riot, which involved guns, broke out between the fans.

After everything calmed down, officials from Clemson and South Carolina called off the series. The game, which is known as one of the oldest in the country, was not played for the next seven years. The two did not meet again until the 1909 season.

The Tigers best win that season came in Atlanta and it came at the expense of Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets supporters at the time always thought they were better and smarter than the country boys from down in Clemson. So when the Tigers agreed to play the city slickers from Atlanta in 1902, the folks at Georgia Tech thought they were going to outsmart Heisman.

That wasn’t the case.

Bob Bradley in his book, Death Valley Days: The Glory of Clemson Football, said Heisman was often described as ingenious, clever and devious. He was always trying to outfox his opponent. In 1902, he brought his Clemson team to play the Yellow Jackets in a game billed by the newspapers in Atlanta as the Country Bumpkins vs. the City Slickers.

Here is an account of the game from Clemson’s school paper The Tiger.

“We had already won a couple of games, and word drifted to Clemson that Georgia Tech would spare nothing to beat us. When the train with the Clemson team and baggage arrived in Atlanta the day before the game, the Tech supporters made it a point to entertain our players royally.

“The Tech supporters marveled at the ease with which they were able to get our players to sneak out that night and participate in the wild parties around town. There was quite a lot of eating and drinking, and the more the Clemson men indulged in such pastime, the more were the Tech men willing to back with money their belief that they would win the next day.

“Boy, did we clean up the Tech money. Clemson won 44-5. The Tech people wondered at the hardiness of the Clemson men after a night of revelry until they discovered that Coach Heisman had sent a bunch of bohunks to Atlanta with the team’s equipment and had kept the varsity at Lula, Georgia, a small town miles from Atlanta, the night before the game.”

Only three teams scored on the 1902 Tigers, Clemson opened the year with an 11-5 victory over NC State, then of course the Yellow Jackets and the Gamecocks scored a combined 17 points. The Tigers shut out Furman, 28-0, and then closed the year with three straight shutouts against Georgia, Auburn and Tennessee.

Clemson played the Volunteers in snow in Knoxville, Tennessee as the Tigers clinched the SIAA Championship with their 11-0 victory. It was the first time a Clemson team played in the snow.