Hating Clemson is hard, since it sucked for so long

If I’m being honest, I’ve a hard time hating Clemson.

When it comes to Florida State’s rivals (queue evil noise), really, they really are the hardest to get mad about. We could sit here and laugh all day about weirdos who bring heads of their mascots to tailgates and Miami fans both experiencing delusions of grandeur and also not knowing what that means, and then also get super pissed off thinking about all the times that things went wrong against them.

Clemson, though? The cats only beat Florida State three times from 1970 to 2003, and since then, have really only gotten wins when FSU’s been on the downswing. That’s not to take away from the powerhouse that they’ve built there, or to really talk too much trash to the fans, who are actually very nice people. I went to cover the game in 2013, and some folks saw my group walking toward the stadium and offered us some food and Pepsi. “We don’t even care about beatin’ y’all,” one man said, “long as we beat South Carolina.”

(It’s a good thing he didn’t, seeing how that game went.)

The Tigers have notched four straight, but the first two were close, and the second should’ve been a win if the ACC didn’t hire children stacked on each other’s shoulders disguised as adults as refs was a chop block penalty away from potentially going Florida State’s way. In 2014, Clemson did FSU a huge solid and blew a hilariously easy upset to keep a perfect season going and in 2013, they gracefully bowed out of their own stadium and let FSU have a national championship season instead. Yeah. “Let.”

Clemson to me, basically, is just the super annoying cousin that you have to see once a year when that part of the family visits Disney. While you were growing up, you got to be the boss, get dibs on everything, and pick what you watched on TV. Then you peaked in college and had to move home for a few months, while they did alright but got a good first job. You’re kicking it, bussing tables at a restaurant for now while they’re taking month-long vacations in Europe, and it’s just a matter of time before I get a good job too, Mom, quit bugging me. They’re not really to blame for my slow rise back, but I know that once I get things going, I’ll be able to flex without restraint once more. Any hatred I feel toward modern-day Clemson is really just jealousy, and that’s a pretty easy thing to overcome.

With all that being said, though, Dabo Swinney is annoying, the real-life embodiment of Kelvin Gemstone, and while I’m sure an overall nice person, terrible dancer, and big ol’ hypocrite:

So I’m all good with hating that nerd.