If you were on College Football Twitter in 2009 and 2010, “Clemsoning” — sometimes used as a participle but slightly more often used in its gerund form — was all the rage. Any failure on the part of Clemson football lit up Twitter, reinforcing just how snake-bitten and barren the program was since it won the ACC in 1991.
For roughly 20 years, Clemson — a place with an established football culture and an abiding love for the sport — simply could not get over the hump and achieve anything of considerable importance. In 2009, an ACC Atlantic Division title — finally achieved — was something to be proud of, but a 9-5 record in a very weak conference at the time did not recall the Good Ol’ Days, the days when Clemson used to be something special. The Tigers flourished under Danny Ford, winning a national title in 1981 and remaining a force throughout the 1980s. The program continued to be a power for two years under new coach Ken Hatfield, but after that 1991 ACC title, Death Valley watched a steady progression of Clemson teams suffer.
The Tommy Bowden years — in all their exasperating ridiculousness — led to the creation of “Clemsoning” in the college football community’s ever-expanding lexicon. An easy dropped touchdown pass in the fourth quarter here; a shanked late-game field goal or botched extra point there; a clumsy turnover over there — you name it, Clemson did whatever it took to avoid winning games of overriding significance.
In the 1980s, the Tigers were the ACC program that took football more seriously than any other — great programs in the early 1980s such as Pitt and Boston College were decades away from making the ACC their home. Florida State had not yet joined the conference. Maryland and North Carolina achieved richly in portions of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. Virginia and Georgia Tech came on strong at the end of the 1980s. Yet, over the course of the full decade, no ACC program was more consistent than Clemson. The idea that the Tigers would go from 1992 through 2010 without a single ACC title did not seem possible in the late 1980s. Yet, that’s what happened, and “Clemsoning” became a regular part of internet-based college football commentary.
There’s just one problem with the continued use of the word “Clemsoning,” however — it is no longer warranted.
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Clemson, after bearing the slings and arrows of miserable fortune, broke through and won the ACC in 2011. The Tigers then beat LSU in the 2012 Peach Bowl. They defeated Ohio State in the 2014 Orange Bowl. They labored through injuries at quarterback and elsewhere to defeat South Carolina in 2014 and hammer Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl.
By any reasonable measurement, Clemson is no longer falling short as a program. What does this mean? Many things, but numero uno is that “Clemsoning” has to be shelved as a term.
What program should take over for Clemson as the most conspicuous underachiever in college football?
Five years ago, Arizona State was a great response, but the Sun Devils are accomplishing a lot more under Todd Graham.
Michigan State was a classic “almost” program, but not now. The Spartans have won a Rose Bowl and a Cotton Bowl in consecutive seasons. They’ve changed their identity as much as Clemson has, if not more.
Miami has been hard to watch the past decade, but the Nevin Shapiro scandal means (and meant) that the Hurricanes’ struggles haven’t been confined to the football field.
True, Nebraska, Washington, and Tennessee have all failed to recapture their glory years, but all three programs achieved something of note as recently as the year 2001.
If you want a foremost example of a long-term underachiever in college football — longer than any of the schools just mentioned — UCLA has to vault to the head of the list.
The location in the greater Los Angeles area. The weather. A genuine tradition of winning, passed along from Red Sanders to Tommy Prothro to Dick Vermeil to Terry Donahue.
Gary Beban played at UCLA. So did Kenny Easley and Wendell Tyler and Troy Aikman, among others. There’s been nothing “mid-tier” or modest about much of UCLA’s gridiron history.
Yet, since a December Saturday in Miami, absolutely nothing has gone right for the Bruins. That 49-45 loss to a Hurricane team that had not yet become “Miami” not only knocked UCLA out of the first BCS National Championship Game (against Tennessee in the 1999 Fiesta Bowl); it dealt the Bruins a psychic blow they have collectively failed to recover from.
Certain events might hit certain players and coaches in the wrong ways, only for subsequent players to erase (or at least diminish) the memory with a bounce-back season the next year. In some cases, though, one event affecting one season somehow manages to ripple through subsequent decades, shattering a program’s sense of itself over time. This is what happened to UCLA, which lost the 1999 Rose Bowl to Wisconsin with a very timid defensive performance and has not been back to the Granddaddy ever since. What had been one of the Pac-10’s most reliable programs is now the program you count on to stub its toe in a moment of truth…
… just like Clemson in the 1990s and 2000s, before the 2011 season which rescued the program.
USC got whacked by the NCAA. The Arizona schools have been portraits of failure over the past third of a century, with a few very rare exceptions. Colorado and Utah have struggled ever since they came to the Pac-12. Yet, despite all those openings, UCLA has not won a Pac-12 title ever since Pete Carroll moved to the NFL. The Bruins made two appearances in the Pac-12 title game, but only one is legitimate. The other one was the product of USC being ineligible in a season when the Trojans smoked the Bruins in the standings.
Last season might have been UCLA’s worst single-season disappointment since the 1998 Miami loss. The Bruins just had to beat the worst Stanford team since 2009 at home to win the Pac-12 South and earn a date with Oregon for the league title. Yet, UCLA lost in Westwood; not only that, the Bruins were manhandled and did not look remotely ready for the occasion.
As 2015 arrives and the Bruins try to figure out how to deal with enormous expectations in the face of history, UCLA wears the label of underachiever more conspicuously than just about any other program in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Until the Bruins win a Pac-12 title, they’re going to be seen as the foremost representation of a program that does less with more. Given that USC now has a fully-loaded roster, it’s only going to be harder for UCLA to keep up solely within the City of Angels if the Trojans deliver on their talent and promise this season.
Pressure? There’s more of it resting on the shoulders of the Bruins and coach Jim Mora than you might be able to appreciate.
What was “Clemsoning” is now “Bruining.” UCLA is what Clemson used to be… and Clemson used to be a living symbol of college football frustration. The Bruins hope they can expunge a negative identity and return to their Terry Donahue roots.
They also hope a new gerund can be created in college football, one which will pass a hot and uncomfortable torch to another underachieving program in 2016.
