Clemson Football: Ranking the 5 best Palmetto Bowl games of the Swinney era

The Palmetto Bowl between Clemson and South Carolina is one of the best rivalries in college athletics.

Unless you have lived in the Palmetto state, understanding what makes this rivalry so great is difficult. With no professional sports, the schools split between the different regions of the state and fans having to live next to each other, the hatred is easy to get caught up in.

As we know, Clemson football has dominated this rivalry from the start. Sure, they lost the first-ever game back 1896, but haven’t done much losing since.

Current Clemson football head coach Dabo Swinney has been a head coach in 12 of these games and has a 7-5 record against the Gamecocks. How important is this game, well the Clemson really does consider this game a season all in its own and the utter domination over the last six years is tangible proof.

From 2009 through 2013, the Gamecocks enjoyed a five-game winning streak. Matter of fact, it is the only time that the team from Columbia has won at least five in a row during the rivalry. Clemson is currently riding a six-game winning streak, which dates back to Deshaun Watson’s freshman year in 2014.

The bad news for the chicken fans, there is no end in sight especially with Will Muschamp leading the way.

Looking over the 12 games that coach Swinney has been part of as the head coach at Clemson, which five are the Top 5 games of his Clemson football coaching career?