By Will Vandervort
CLEMSON — No one wants to beat 12th-ranked South Carolina on Saturday more than Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney. And if you don’t believe that then go watch this video from a practice following the Tigers loss to the Gamecocks last year.
It is well documented that Swinney is the first Clemson coach since Frank Howard to lose to South Carolina three straight years. If the ninth-ranked Tigers should fall this year, and I’m saying if, then Swinney will join Howard as the only two Clemson coaches in 58 years to lose to the hated Gamecocks four years in a row.
Howard’s Tigers lost four straight to South Carolina from 1951-’54.
“Yes, I will be incredibly disappointed if we don’t win this ball game,” Swinney told the media at his weekly press conference. “It is not only the biggest game of the year, but it is special. You have to deal with it all year. This is about pride, state pride.
“I have to live with it. Everybody has to live with it – the players, the coaches and the fans. You have to deal with it.”
Though that might be the case, Swinney says the entire success of a football season should not be based on this one game. Clemson (10-1) has already won 10 regular season games for the first time in 31 years, while setting team and individual records along the way.
Ranked No. 11 in the latest Bowl Championship Series standings, the Tigers are one of eight teams that are still in contention for an at-large berth according to BCS officials today.
Last year, the Tigers made it to their first BCS game by winning the ACC Championship and playing in the Orange Bowl. Now, for a second straight year they have positioned themselves to earn another BCS berth.
A few years ago, that seemed unimaginable when Clemson struggled to get to bowl eligibility and had one of the worse offenses in the country.
“I think that is sad,” said Swinney when told that some fans might consider the 2012 season a failure should his Clemson team lose to the Gamecocks. “That is a sad way to think about things. I think people that say that have no appreciation for how hard it is to win. It is just that simple. It is hard to win 10 ball games.
“It is hard to do. People who say that stuff, they don’t understand, they don’t get it.”
Swinney reminded his loyal fans that beating South Carolina isn’t the only task at Clemson. It is the biggest game, but beating South Carolina does not make or break a coach’s career at Clemson.
In 1976, Red Parker’s Tigers beat the Gamecocks to conclude a 3-6-2 regular season. Parker was fired that following Monday. In 1993, Ken Hatfield’s team rallied to beat South Carolina in Columbia by scoring the game’s last 13 points, but he too was let go the following Monday and his team was 8-3 and accepted an invitation to play in the Peach Bowl.
Then in 1998, Tommy West was fired the week leading up to the game, which Clemson won to close a 3-8 regular season, still the program’s worst year since Parker’s 1976 team.
“So we if we lost all of those games and we were 0-11, but we win this game, we have had a great year? I doubt it,” Swinney said. “I doubt that person will sign off on that.”
What fans do get is they want to see Clemson once again take control of a series they feel is rightfully theirs.
“Mama always said not one is happy unless you moved on,” Swinney said. “That’s our objective every year. We try to win them all and be the best that we can be.
“All I want to do is play our best game Saturday night and see our guys compete relentlessly.”
And more than anything, he wants that to result in a victory over South Carolina.