Clemson has a rich bowl history. In fact, the Tigers’ 20 bowl-wins rank 17th in the history of college football, and their 40 bowl game appearances, including this year’s Fiesta Bowl matchup against No. 3 Ohio State, are tied for 17th most all-time.
Clemson’s first bowl game was in the 1940 Cotton Bowl when the Tigers defeated Frank Leahy’s Boston College team, 6-3.
The 2017 Fiesta Bowl will mean the Tigers will have played in a bowl game in 28 of the last 32 years. That is among the top-10 bowl appearances since 1985. Clemson has also been bowl-eligible 17 consecutive years.
This year’s Fiesta Bowl will mark the program’s 32nd bowl appearance in the last 40 seasons, dating back to the 1977 Gator Bowl. Clemson was bowl eligible in 1982, but banned itself from participating in one due to an NCAA investigation. In 1983, the NCAA banned the Tigers’ from postseason participation, and the ACC followed with another year of probation in 1984. By the way, Clemson was bowl eligible in all three seasons, as well as the 1980 season, but it did not get invited to a bowl game that year.
In 2004, Clemson banned itself from bowl participation as a punishment for the team’s involvement in the 2004 bench-clearing brawl against rival South Carolina.
Since 1977, Clemson has been bowl eligible in 37 of the 40 football seasons – 1992 (5-6), 1994 (5-6) and 1998 (3-8) are the only three seasons they have not.
The Tigers have beaten some of the top programs in college football history in bowl games. The list of schools includes prominent programs like LSU, Miami, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Stanford, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Clemson won its first three bowl games, wins over Boston College, Missouri and Miami. The three coaches Clemson beat in those games were Frank Leahy, Don Faurot and Andy Gustafson, and all three are in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Clemson has a football program that has been steady over the years in bowl games, no matter who has served as head coach of the Tigers. No less than seven different head coaches (Jess Neely, Frank Howard, Danny Ford, Ken Hatfield, Tommy West, Tommy Bowden and Dabo Swinney) have all been victorious in bowl games for the Tigers since the 1939 season.
Overall, 10 of Clemson’s 20 bowl wins have come against head coaches who reside in the College Football Hall of Fame, including the late Joe Paterno of Penn State. Clemson is 4-0 in bowl games against the top-five winningest coaches in FBS history (Frank Leahy, Tom Osborne, Barry Switzer and Urban Meyer).
Clemson has achieved bowl wins over some of the greatest coaches in history:
- Leahy when Clemson defeated Boston College in the 1940 Cotton Bowl.
- Joe Paterno of Penn State when Clemson beat Penn State 35-10 in the 1988 Citrus Bowl. It was Paterno’s largest margin of defeat in a bowl game.
- Woody Hayes of Ohio State in the 1978 Gator Bowl, Hayes’ last game as a coach.
- Switzer of Oklahoma in the 1989 Citrus Bowl, Switzer’s final game as a college coach.
- Osborne of Nebraska in the 1982 Orange Bowl, which gave Clemson its only National Championship at the end of the 1981 season.
- Don Nehlen of West Virginia when Clemson downed the Mountaineers 27-7 in the 1989 Gator Bowl.
- Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee, who had over 150 career wins, in the 2003 Peach Bowl.
- Les Miles of Louisiana State, who led the Tigers to the 2007 National Championship, fell to Clemson 25-24 in the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl.
- Meyer of Ohio State in the 2013 Orange Bowl.
- Bob Stoops, who won a National Championship in 2000 with Oklahoma, saw his Sooners fall in back to back bowl games, including the 2015 Orange Bowl.
—Clemson Athletic Communications