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. 10 team on our list:
The 1938 Tigers (7-1-1, 3-0-1 in SoCon)
Prior to 1938, Clemson had struggled on the football field. Of course, like a lot of small schools in those days, “The Great Depression” played a big role in the Tigers’ decline since the days when Josh Cody’s teams were winning eight games a year in the late 1920s.
On October 16, 1931, Clemson suffered a surprising loss to The Citadel in Florence, South Carolina. Though he was not even a year into the job, head coach Jess Neely could see the writing on the wall. He knew Clemson needed to do something to protect the future of the program for what was called the lean years of Clemson football.
After the game, in a parked car outside of the stadium, Neely, Captain Frank Jervey and others discussed ideas on how they could get the football program back on track. That meeting got the ball rolling towards the establishment of the IPTAY Foundation.
Nearly three years later, on August 20, 1934, IPTAY, the nation’s first scholarship fundraising organization, was founded. In the three seasons prior to IPTAY’S formation, Clemson won just seven games and did not have a winning record.
Starting in 1934, the Tigers slowly started working back to respectability as they went 5-4 and posted a 6-3 mark in 1935. In 1936 they went 5-5 and then were 4-4-1 in 1937. But thanks to IPTAY, the pieces were in place for Clemson to have its best four-year run since Cody’s run from 1927-’30.
The 1938 team laid the foundation for the Tigers run to its first bowl game in 1939. Led by future All-American Banks McFadden, Clemson opened the season with a 26-0 victory over Presbyterian before stunning 19th-ranked Tulane in New Orleans in Week 2.
After a loss to Tennessee and a tie to VMI, the Tigers reeled off five straight wins to close the season, starting with a 34-12 victory over South Carolina on Big Thursday and ending with a 10-7 victory over Furman in the season finale.
The best win of the season came in between against George Washington in Greenville, North Carolina. The Tigers scored three touchdowns on plays of at least 65 yards, the first time in Clemson history it had multiple scoring plays of that distance in the same game.
McFadden ran 70yards on the first play from scrimmage and later Shad Bryant took a punt back 65 yards for a touchdown. Bryant later scored on another 65-yard play, this time on a lateral. Clemson won the game, 27-0.
The Tigers finished the season 7-1-1, including a 3-0-1 in the Southern Conference, which was second place.