This is the sobering reality for Clemson. The Tigers may not be good once again. Although Clemson was not going to be anywhere close to a top-25 team this week, it is astonishing that the Tigers did not receive a single point in the latest AP Top 25 Poll. Nobody thought for a nanosecond this team deserved a top-25 vote, especially after what we saw transpire on Saturday night at the LSU Tigers.
No, Clemson was not among the 18 other teams receiving votes. In fact, the 112 points they received coming into this season were nowhere to be found. Of the 18 teams that got at least one point this week, two of them actually lost their games. Boise State looked impressive in its almost-upset of Oregon. To be quite frank, Western Michigan should have beaten Michigan, which is now unranked.
Right now, there are much bigger fish for Clemson to fry than thinking about cracking the AP Top 25 Poll anytime soon. Its next three opponents are home versus Georgia Southern, home versus North Carolina in the Tigers' ACC opener, and at California on a Friday night. The only way Clemson gets back into the top 25 here soon is by winning those three games in a row and upsetting No. 7 Miami.
Clemson does not receive a vote in second AP Top 25 Poll of the season
While it certainly stinks for Clemson to be this far out of it this soon, there are a few positives to glean from the second AP Top 25 Poll of the season from a national perspective. The AP voters dropped Oregon four spots after its close call at home with Boise State. Michigan deserved to completely fall out of the top 25 after narrowly avoiding total embarrassment versus Western Michigan on Saturday.
Furthermore, seven of the top eight teams in this week's poll received at least one first-place vote. Ohio State led the way with 46. Clemson's Week 1 opponent in LSU received the third most first-place votes at five, allowing the Bayou Bengals to move up three spots from No. 11 to No. 8. Only No. 2 Georgia did not receive a first-place vote inside the top eight, as it only beat FCS Tennessee State.
Even if Clemson was not projected to make the top 25 this week, the first true AP Poll of the season did show the voters are not going to be beholden to some arbitrary preseason biases this year. AP voters can be incredibly overreactionary, but everything that they chose to do this week was both measured and justified. Even if that means not even mentioning Clemson, they had the right to do so.
To be totally blunt, this is such a fall from grace for Clemson under Dabo Swinney. While the days of winning national championships are certainly over with and done under his leadership, Clemson may no longer be as good as what the Tigers were under his predecessor Tommy Bowden now. If 8-4 is the new standard for this team, then this second AP Top 25 Poll of the season must be a wakeup call.
Then again, it can always be worse. Look no further than Michigan winning a game and dropping out.
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