Clemson Football: Notre Dame, SEC & Big Ten should be thanking Tigers

Why thank Notre Dame when you can thank the true rescuers of CFB? Clemson football.

Just a week ago, ESPN College GameDay- which was in Winston-Salem to showcase Clemson football against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons- used one of its segments to pen a letter to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

It wasn’t a letter telling Notre Dame to have a good game against Duke. It wasn’t a letter telling the Fighting Irish it was time to join a conference. No, it was a letter thanking Notre Dame for “saving the College Football season.”

It’s not just nauseating to see things like this that simply aren’t true, it’s even more frustrating to see that national media- and fans alike- don’t recognize the true saviors of the College Football season: The Clemson Tigers.

Clemson football saved the College Football season by sparking the #WeWantToPlay movement

If you don’t remember- the week that the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled its seasons, originally- there were plenty of reports that it was inevitable that all Power-5 conferences would cancel by the end of the week.

Little did they know what would actually happen.

With the College Football season hanging in the balance, it was Clemson football QB Trevor Lawrence who spoke up and changed the course of how things were seeming to almost inevitably be heading.

Lawrence posted this simply Tweet and thousands of athletes- led by the Clemson football players- followed suit.

Dabo Swinney later revealed that he had spoken with his team and told them that if they wanted to play, they would have to ‘change the narrative.’ They did exactly that.

"“It was a Saturday practice, literally right before I went to practice I had gotten an email, kind of a heads up about I guess the Big 10 or whoever they were talking about canceling,” Swinney said via Sports Illustrated. “So you know, I actually challenged our guys I just said, ‘Hey, you guys want to play. You’re gonna have to change the narrative from a player’s perspective, because the narrative is we’re making everybody play, you know, that’s just not reality. You know, everybody here’s a volunteer we all, nobody has to be no coach, no player.’ “And, you know, our plus our players came out and fought for their season. And that was the only time, to me, that our players— that Saturday, Sunday Monday Tuesday—that kind of a few days there were I felt like… nobody really knew.”"

All of a sudden, the narrative had been changed. The hit pieces that many national media members had written about players being held were without merit. College Football players yelled out with a unifying voice that, above all else, they wanted to play this fall.

And that’s the first cornerstone that saved the College Football season.

Would leagues like the SEC and ACC still played without the #WeWantToPlay movement? Perhaps. But, it certainly would’ve been more difficult and the optics would’ve looked absolutely terrible. But the players stepping up and relaying this message that they wanted to be there gave the conferences- who wanted to move forward- confidence that they could do so and protect themselves from media firestorms.

Oh, and now we also have the Big Ten resuming its season later in October after canceling earlier in August.

Say what you want to about who saved the College Football season, but we all know the truth: The Clemson football program was a part of changing the narrative- as it has been all season- and there’s no doubt that the SEC, Notre Dame, Big Ten and others should be lining up to thank the Tigers for using their voices and platforms.