Clemson football: Paul Finebaum says Tiger brand has taken a hit

The Clemson football program has been on top of the college football world for more than the last half-decade and it doesn’t seem like the Tigers are going anywhere anytime soon.

At least, not to those of us who are around the program and see the continued building being accomplished by Dabo Swinney.

However, on the outside-looking in, there is speculation and growing voices who are beginning to become louder about a potential downfall of Clemson football.

People look at the recruiting in this current cycle and they look at the last two CFB Playoff appearances for the Tigers and they look at the additions being made by the SEC in Texas and Oklahoma, and they come to certain conclusions.

SEC Network Analyst Paul Finebaum believes the additions of Texas and Oklahoma will hurt the brand of Clemson football

On the Dan Patrick show earlier this week, Finebaum had this to say about Clemson:

"“On one hand you’re assured of your league, but your brand has gone down a little bit,” Finebaum said. “The ACC has some real issues. I heard over the weekend the ACC was looking to expand and one of the first schools they were talking about was West Virginia…. You’ll add a few schools, but you can’t compete.”"

Finebaum said the biggest move the ACC could make right now would be adding Notre Dame to the league as a full-time member, however he believes it will be extremely difficult for the conference to lure the Irish in.

"“The biggest prize left is Notre Dame, and they’re kind of half in the ACC. If you’re Notre Dame , why do you need ACC right now? You have the benefit of it in basketball. You collect the money there. You have five games there and you have your own TV network. Right now, it doesn’t make much sense.”"

While we disagree that the brand of Clemson football specifically is going down based off the moves of the SEC, we actually agree with many of Finebaum’s sentiments here- there’s a first for everything, right?

The Tigers are still going to be a perennial contender, but there’s no doubt that the ACC’s perception- which was already low- is going to go down in the eyes of the nation when you look at what the SEC is going to be doing. That financial gap and the perception gap are going to be hard for the ACC to overcome and adding West Virginia certainly isn’t going to do it.

Perhaps the only major way would be to add Notre Dame, as Finebaum says, but why would the Irish want to come to the ACC right now? They’ve been adamant about remaining as an Independent and no recent development thus far would tell us anything has changed.