Remember those days when Clemson fans use to be satisfied with just getting bowl eligible? When winning eight regular season games was considered a good year?
Those days are long gone.
Clemson’s football program has reached a level it has never reached before. The Tigers and their fans no longer long for eight or nine-win seasons and contending for ACC Championships. The standard is much higher now. Heck, 10 wins doesn’t even seem like the goal anymore.
These days, Clemson’s football program aims high and it has every reason to aim high. In the last four years, no team in college football has won more games and national championships than Clemson.
The Tigers are coming off the greatest season any college football team has had since the invention of the forward pass in 1906.
They were the first 15-0 team in the modern era. What does that mean exactly?
Well, they were the first team to go 15-0 since two-platoon football began in 1964. They’re the first team to got 15-0 since the Associated Press Poll began in 1936. They are the first team to go 15-0 since the Quakers at the University of Pennsylvania went 15-0 in 1897.
Clemson is the standard now in college football. The 2018 team is what everyone will measure up to. Last year, the Tigers won 13 games by 20 or more points, the most in the history of college football.
So, what’s my point in all of this?
Look at it this way, despite losing seven starters off a defense that ranked in the top five in scoring and total defense in 2018 and despite losing its entire front four and its top reserve player on the defensive line, Clemson is one of seven teams Las Vegas thinks can run the table in 2019.
Prior to the current eight-year run of dominance Clemson is on, losing that much personnel in one year would cripple the program for several years and would lower everyone’s expectations. But that was back then. That’s not now.
In the last couple of days, Vegas released its odds for the 2019 season and has Clemson as the favorite to win a second straight national championship. Vegas also has Clemson favored to win every single game next year.
Times have changed at Clemson. No longer is eight to nine-win seasons considered a good year.
Nope, these days Clemson fans long to go 12-0, and there is no reason to believe they can’t. That’s how much the Clemson football program has changed.
Continue to enjoy the ride.