With the 2025 college football season set to kick off in one month, ESPN took a look at the swing game for every top 25 team, or the “key game that could determine whether each team’s season is a success or a dud.”

The swing game that ESPN highlighted for Clemson comes as no surprise – the highly anticipated season-opening showdown against LSU at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium on Aug. 30 (7:30 p.m., ABC).

“This one is fairly obvious,” ESPN’s Andrea Adelson wrote. “The Tigers open the season at home against LSU, a huge game that will serve to show whether all the hype surrounding Clemson is warranted. Clemson has lost three of its past four season openers, including two to another SEC school in Georgia. Winning is hugely important, but so is the way Clemson looks right out of the gate with an experienced team that returns its best playmakers on offense and some of its best defenders from a year ago.

“Here is why that ‘eye test’ matters to perception: In those three season-opening losses to Georgia (2021, 2024) and Duke (2023), Clemson managed to score a combined 13 points and just one total touchdown. That simply cannot happen with QB Cade Klubnik entering Year 3 as the starter.”

After four previous postseason meetings, this year will mark the first meeting between Clemson and LSU in regular season play. Clemson is 12-5 against SEC opponents in regular season play in the College Football Playoff era.

LSU holds a 3-1 advantage in the all-time series against Clemson. The two programs have squared off twice during Dabo Swinney’s tenure, splitting the two contests. The most recent matchup came in the 2019 national title game with LSU winning 42-25.

ESPN also pegged the opener against Clemson as the swing game for LSU.

“LSU is 0-3 in season openers under Brian Kelly. If there was a year to change that and set the table for the season, this is it,” ESPN’s Harry Lyles Jr. wrote. “Cade Klubnik is expected by many to be among the best quarterbacks in college football this season, with Clemson primed for another run into the CFP. LSU looks just about as talented and ready to make a national championship push as any team in the country, but the Tigers need to look closer to their final form from the jump than they have in recent years.”

As for one of Clemson’s ACC foes, the swing game for SMU, according to ESPN, is the Oct. 18 matchup against the Tigers at Death Valley.

Of course, it will be a rematch of the teams’ thrilling 2024 ACC Championship Game. The Tigers and Mustangs met for the first time in series history last December when Nolan Hauser’s 56-yard walk-off field goal gave Clemson its record 22nd ACC title and sent the Tigers to their seventh College Football Playoff.

“SMU’s schedule for the first half of the season is manageable, with home dates against Baylor and Syracuse and a road trip to TCU providing the toughest matchups,” ESPN’s David Hale wrote. “The Mustangs won’t be at a serious talent disadvantage in any of them, making a strong start to the season imperative. The back half of the schedule, however, gets much tougher, starting with the clear swing game — and a chance for revenge from last year’s ACC championship — when the Mustangs travel to Death Valley to take on Clemson on Oct. 18. That game kicks off a gauntlet that sees SMU hosting Miami and Louisville and making tough road trips to BC and Cal in the season’s final weeks. Whether SMU was a one-hit wonder in the ACC or is a power ready to compete will be determined down the stretch in 2025, with no game looming larger than the date with the Tigers.”