Go ahead and keep counting out Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers. History proves that there is nothing more dangerous in college football than a hungry, highly motivated Clemson squad with a massive chip on its shoulder.
As the national media marks the 100-day countdown to the Week 0 kickoff, CBS Sports released a series of burning questions and post-spring power rankings that practically clear the way for a legendary Tiger revenge tour. Pundits are tripping over themselves to crown the Miami Hurricanes as the new kings of the ACC, openly questioning how long it will take traditional powerhouses like Clemson and Florida State to claw their way back to prominence.
Lumping Clemson in with the mess going on in Tallahassee is just plain lazy. Yes, the Tigers had to stomach a 7-6 season in 2025, our first time outside the Top 25 since 2010. But let’s be real: Clemson is just a handful of plays from being right back on top, while Mike Norvell and FSU have managed only seven wins total over the last two years. The ACC has always run through Clemson and FSU—14 out of 15 conference titles from 2011 to 2024 prove it. But now the media wants you to buy into the idea that Miami, a program that’s never even won an ACC title, suddenly runs the show.
The Ultimate Stage in Baton Rouge
Clemson won't have to wait long to reclaim its rightful place at the table. The Tigers open the 2026 season with a prime-time blockbuster against LSU, a matchup CBS Sports writer Chip Patterson tabs as one of the absolute best non-conference games of the year.
But the real headline as we head to Death Valley South is Lane Kiffin’s jaw-dropping move to take over at LSU, shaking up the entire college football landscape.
"There are now 138 head coaches and tens of thousands of individuals represented among the players, assistants and staffers at the FBS level of college football, but there is only one Lane Kiffin," Patterson said. "Perhaps we should have known that the entire sport was in the palm of his hand when the flight patterns of his private jet were being reported as though we were living a LeBron James free agency summer with Lane's decisions between Ole Miss, Florida and LSU. The decision to leave the Rebels for a bitter conference rival is a touchstone event in SEC lore that will live on for decades, but it's also a national college football story because of Lane Kiffin as a character and the proven potential for LSU's ceiling with talent.
"After bemoaning the cost of buyouts as bad business, LSU gifted Kiffin with a lucrative contract and then spent millions to assemble the No. 1 transfer portal class in the country. Kiffin also poached some of the top coaches and players from Ole Miss, bringing the transactional nature of the sport to Front Street for fans who might yearn for the sport's more relationship-based past... If you got worn out by non-stop Kiffin talk throughout his lengthy courting process, prepare yourself for even higher doses of Kiffin Mania when it comes to judging his debut season on the biggest stages at the end of the year. The thin line between success and failure will be drawn when the bracket is set in December, and once the games start this fall, the pomp will flip to pressure as college football's star boy seeks to fulfill the wildest dreams of an LSU fan base that expects a return on its investment."
Fuel for the Fire
If the constant national disrespect wasn’t enough to get the Upstate fired up, CBS Sports just poured gasoline on the fire. Somehow, they dropped Clemson all the way to No. 6 in their ACC power rankings—behind Miami, SMU, Louisville, Pitt, and Virginia. You can’t make this stuff up.
The talking heads love to point at Clemson’s last two recruiting classes—No. 21 and No. 31—and a portal class ranked 66th as proof the Tigers are slipping. CBS Sports’ David Cobb even called out Clemson for not having a proven star at quarterback, as if that’s all it takes to write off a program built on winning.
"If there were an established star quarterback in the fold, maybe it would be easier to envision the Tigers returning to the top of the conference. But the job belongs to unproven redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina, who will be working under the direction of offensive coordinator Chad Morris, who is back in the OC role after holding it previously from 2011-14. There is enough skill talent around Vizzina and enough proven production on defense for Clemson to finish in the league's upper third. But reaching the playoff will be a tall task for a program coming off a 7-6 campaign," Cobb writes.
Let them sleep on on Christopher Vizzina. Let thignore the chess master that is Chad Morris, back where he belongs. Clemson’s got the skill, the defense, and the hunger to tear through the so-called ACC elite. Making the College Football Playoff might seem impossible to the CBS crowd, but in Tiger Town, that’s just business as usual
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