Thursday September 27, 2007

Humility

Humility
Ward and June Cleaver would be proud of Clemson fans in 2007.

The Tigers are 4-0 and ranked 13th in the country but the Clemson fans have been very polite. I was at the NC State game this past weekend and Clemson outgained the Wolfpack by over 400 yards yet Tiger coaches, players and even fans were gracious and reserved.

In the past I have seen a dominant performance be followed up with trash talking but maybe the Tiger fans in attendance on Saturday were afraid of getting shot in the parking lots surrounding Carter-Finley Stadium.

In the past when a team is dominant we have seen message boards light up with insults towards the defeated opponent but not this week. Maybe President Barker’s sportsmanship videos are the reason for the ladies and gentlemen acting like ladies and gentlemen instead of college football fans. Heck, it might even be the billboards the university put up as you enter Clemson that have convinced fans to be more courteous.

Ten years ago if Clemson was 4-0, ranked in the top 15 and had just dominated NC State the Clemson faithful maybe have gone wild in predictions of national titles and ACC championships. However, that is not the case this week. Instead, I hear Tiger fans taking a very cautious approach.

“You know we don’t play very well in Bobby Dodd Stadium,” is ringing throughout campus.

“Don’t you guys forget about road games at Maryland and Duke. We lost the last time we played at Duke,” has been uttered a few times this week as well.

“We have to take it one game at a time,” more than one Clemson fan has exclaimed this week.

Where is the swagger? Where are the brash statements? Has humility set in?

In my opinion the real reason for the cautious attitude is the collapse of 2006. Clemson fans remember beating Georgia Tech and they remember that exciting day and night in Tigertown. They remember the top 10 rankings also. But I remember hearing about how this team had a shot at even bigger and better things.

It is amazing what happened next. Clemson lost four of its last five and Tech rebounded to win the Coastal Division. The Tigers were more talented than Maryland, South Carolina and Kentucky, even though all three won their bowl games, but it was not about talent. It was about coaches, players and fans getting too far ahead of themselves. It was about losing focus. It was about not reacting to adversity.

There has never been a football team, to my knowledge, that has not faced adversity and this team should be no different. It may come in the form of a stiff challenge this Saturday in Atlanta. It may come next week against the Hokies. It may come in the form of injuries or suspensions or a rash of turnovers or anything but rest assured it is coming. It is how each team handles adversities that often shape their success or failures.

I don’t think it is fair to judge this team by past team’s successes or failures. Just because Clemson collapsed late last year it does not mean they will this season. Just because they won or lost against a team last year does not transfer to the 2007 team.

A few years ago former Clemson running backs coach Burton Burns told me that each team had a separate identity. He said that each team had a different personality and those personalities began to take shape each January when the seniors had moved on and the red-shirt guys had become a bigger voice in winter workouts.

Burns felt like each team was different but that was a good thing and he loved trying to read each team as early as possible. He would say how you could not tell how hard a team may work or how tough a team may be. He said the team and its character were always exposed at some point in each season.

The 2007 Tigers have not reached that point yet. They taught us an awful lot when they worked as hard as they did in the off season. They also taught us a lot about themselves in the FSU and NCSU games. We will learn even more about this team this Saturday and the following Saturday but we will not know who this team is until they have to react to adversity.

The 2003 team looked like they were dead in the water after a loss to Wake Forest but came back to beat FSU, Duke, South Carolina and Tennessee. That team revealed its character during that stretch.

The 2006 team folded its tent when adversity struck in the Virginia Tech game but its the 2007 team that is still paying for it.

Maybe we are better fans now though. I think we would all like to have sportsmanship in the front of our minds. Humility is always a good trait to have. But this is southern college football and southern college football and trash talking go hand in hand. Realistic and cautious expectations don’t mix too well with us diehard fans. We are the fans that like to tell our counterparts just how close we came to beating a team even though the rest of the country saw a different game. We are the ones that constantly look at the schedule and starting making bowl reservations way too soon. A college football fans always thinks his team should win the upcoming game and usually tells the opponent that throughout the week.

This Eddie Haskell stuff is hard because we really want to feel overly confident but are scared to because we are scared to get burned again. So we just keep playing nice and act like adults for a few more weeks but man that is hard to do for us diehards.

I……………just…………can’t…………help.......................it.
It……………..is………………….soooooooooooooooo………………..hard. “We are gonna destroy you guys this weekend….” Aaahhhh. That felt so good! Sorry for the swagger. Sorry Ward and June.

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