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. 3 team on our list:
The 1948 Tigers (11-0, 5-0 ACC, SoCon Champions, ranked No. 11)
There were a lot of Clemson supporters that thought Frank Howard stunk as a football coach early in his career, especially after his Tigers posted a 23-30-2 record from 1942-’47.
But the bad results weren’t necessarily Howard’s fault. In those days, Clemson was an all-male military college and the majority of its students enlisted for active duty to help America in the Second World War.
A good part of those students came from the football program, which depleted the Clemson roster for several years. As the war drove to an end, Howard finally started seeing his football program get back to where it was earlier in the decade.
In 1945, Clemson went 6-3-1 and though the 1946 and ’47 teams posted identical 4-5 records, Howard felt something was about to change in his football program and that Clemson was once again headed for big things. The only problem, would Clemson give him enough time to see it through.
Following the 1947 season, a group of students approached Howard and asked him to resign. Howard was able to hold off the uprising, but he knew the 1948 season might be his last if his gut was telling him wrong.
“Some people were after my scalp the year before, but those three sophomore (running) backs really put some numbers on the board,” Howard said years later.
Those three sophomores were Fred Cone, Jackie Calvert and Ray Mathews. Along with senior Bobby Gage, Clemson’s backfield helped the Tigers produce their first undefeated season since 1900.
“We also had an outstanding coaching staff,” Cone said. “Coach Howard was our leader, but the assistants were very good. I remember Goat McMillan drilling us on how to hide the ball when we were practicing the spin for the Single-Wing offense. He taught us all the tricks of hiding the ball from the defense.”
Clemson outscored its opponents 250-53 in 1948 as it was one of only three teams—joining Michigan and California—to finish the year undefeated.
“We only had three seniors on the team, but one of them was Gage, the tailback. And he was a heady player and would take chances,” Howard said. “Cone probably didn’t say two dozen words on the field during his three years, but when we got to the ten-yard line, it was ole Freddie’s the rest of the way.
“Mathews was a crafty passer and runner, while Calvert was a more than adequate replacement for Gage. And that (offensive) line in ’48 was about the best blocking one I ever had. With these players, we had a lot of fun, especially in 1948 and again in 1950.”
Clemson’s fun began with a 53-0 victory over Presbyterian College and then with wins over NC State and Mississippi State. After a bye week, the 3-0 Tigers moved into the Associated Press Top 20 for the first time since 1945 and were heading to Columbia to face archrival South Carolina in the annual Big Thursday Game during State Fair Week.
For much of the afternoon the Gamecocks outplayed the 14th-ranked Tigers and even entered the fourth quarter with a 7-0 lead thanks to a 27-yard touchdown pass from Bo Hagan to end Roger Wilson in the first quarter.
But a fumble at the end of the third quarter set up a one-yard touchdown from Cone to pull Clemson within one point, but the Tigers’ subsequent extra point failed. The score remained 7-6 until late in the fourth quarter.
With USC clinging to its one-point lead and time running down, Clemson got a crucial stop on third-and-two from the Gamecocks’ 24, forcing a punting situation. What happened next still lives in Clemson lore.
Tackle Phil Prince came off the right side of South Carolina’s line and blocked the punt. End Oscar Thompson scooped the bouncing ball up at the 11 and rumbled into the end zone for the game-winning score. Clemson won the game, 13-7.
“Vince Lombardi once said, ‘To be a successful team, you have to love each other.’ We were always there for each other,” Prince said. “To go undefeated and untied, we had to stay together. We had a lot of cliff hangers in that season and we had to stay together to pull them out.
“We didn’t have any quit in that team.”
From there the Tigers carried that momentum as they rolled over Furman, Duquesne and The Citadel, while squeaking out wins over Boston College, Wake Forest and Auburn.
“Honestly, before the season began, I thought maybe we might win six (games), and again I thought maybe we might lose six,” Howard said. “I probably chewed more tobacco that year than ever before. If I had to guess why we had such a good season, I’d say it was because we all pitched in with the material we had, worked hard and played hard.”
At 10-0, Clemson was rewarded with an invitation to play in the third annual Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida where they played the Tigers of Missouri, who were 8-2 and finished second in the Big Seven Conference to Oklahoma.
Though Clemson was undefeated and ranked 11th in the country, it was still considered the underdog, primarily because of Missouri’s Spilt-T offense. Missouri averaged 36 points a game and their offensive line outweighed Clemson’s by more than five pounds per man.
But it was Clemson that jumped out to an early lead. In front of a then Gator Bowl record crowd of 35,273—21,000 from Clemson—the orange clad Tigers raced to 14-0 lead thanks to two one-yard touchdown runs from Cone. But Missouri answered with two touchdowns of its own in the second quarter to tie the game 14-14 at halftime.
Clemson opened the second half with a quick scoring drive, capped off by a Gage nine-yard pass to John Poulos for a 21-14 lead. Missouri cut into Clemson’s lead when Gage missed played a punt deep in his own territory and had to take a safety.
Clemson was able to counter with a 32-yard Jack Miller field goal in the fourth quarter, the only field goal made during the 1948 season. There was not another successful field goal at Clemson until the fourth game of the 1956 season against Wake Forest. That was a stretch of 72 games in between.
Missouri responded with a touchdown to cut the lead to 24-23. What happened next is what Howard called his favorite play from his favorite player during his 30 years as Clemson’s head coach.
With time winding down and the football resting at the Missouri 41, Clemson founded itself faced with a fourth-and-three situation. Howard pondered whether he should punt the ball back to Missouri, but he felt if he did, Missouri would probably win the game.
“I certainly didn’t want to let Missouri get the ball again,” he said. “Neither one of us had stopped the other all day.”
In those days, it was against the rules to send in plays from the sideline so Gage called his own plays, and when he decided to go for it, Howard took a deep breath.
“I turned to Russ ‘Pop’ Cohen, one of my coaches, and said, ‘Ole man, if they make it, I’ll be a great coach. If they don’t, they might ride me out of Clemson on a rail with tar and feathers,’” Howard said.
Gage called for Cone to go up the gut, but the Clemson fullback was met with resistance. Appearing as if he might go down with no gain, Cone bounced the play outside and rushed for six yards to the Missouri 35, sealing the victory and saving Clemson’s undefeated season.
“That one six-yard play stands out in my mind the most, and this boy Cone is the best player I ever coached,” Howard said.
A year after being asked to step down as head coach, Howard completed an undefeated season with a dramatic-victory in the Gator Bowl on New Year’s Day. Sixty-seven years later, the 1949 Gator Bowl is still considered one of the most exciting games in the bowl’s history.
“From a spectator’s standpoint, I still think it is the most exciting game I ever saw a Clemson team play,” Howard said. “We couldn’t stop them and they couldn’t stop us. That’s the reason we went for it on fourth down late in the game.
“I was afraid to let them have the ball back. I guess we were fortunate, but we had some good players and they came through for us.”
For Clemson, it jumped started an era that saw the football program go to six bowl games in 12 years, including two trips to the Orange Bowl and one Sugar Bowl appearance.
“I don’t think that I have ever had more satisfaction out of one season than I did in 1948,” Howard said.