CLEMSON – The more things change, the more they stay the same for Clemson in college football.

What does that mean, exactly?

Clemson has always been the little guy in a sport that is run by the big boys like Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and Notre Dame to name a few.

“At Clemson, we always have to have a chip on our shoulder,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said Monday on Greg McElroy’s Always College Football podcast. “It just is what it is, we don’t have the same alumni base that other schools we have played and had to compete with over the years have. That’s just the way it is.”

Yet, as Swinney pointed out, the Tigers are 3-1 against Ohio State during his time at Clemon, 2-2 vs. Alabama and 4-2 vs Notre Dame.

“Notre Dame has their own TV station. They make their own rules. They print their own money. They got like their own money machine in the backyard or something,” Swinney joked.

Under Swinney, Clemson is 4-0 against Auburn, 2-0 against Texas A&M and 2-0 against Oklahoma. Oh by the way, the Tigers have won two national championships in the process. As he pointed out, those are all programs the Tigers are not supposed to compete with, much less beat on a consistent basis.

Yes, they have and they have done it over and over again through the years.

This has been Clemson’s fight since it began playing college football in 1896. The Tigers have always been the underdog, and they embrace it.   

“The more things change the more they stay the same,” Swinney said. “Now, it is just different (in how it is done). We do not have the same NIL budget as some places have. We do not have some of the same built-in resources from an alumni base and all of that type of stuff.

“We don’t but guess what? We never have. But you know what we do have? We have enough. We got enough. We just have to be good with what we have.”

But like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe in the Bible, Clemson has enough.

“We may only have five loafs and two fish, but we got enough,” Swinney said. “We have to bring all we got to the table and use it and be smart. Then we just have to be Clemson.

“We have won here for so long because we have been unique in how we have done things. We just have to continue to be that.”