Thursday September 20, 2007

Where are the Red Shoes, Sunglasses and Clown's Nose?

Where are the Red Shoes, Sunglasses and Clown’s Nose?
Forgive me if I seem slightly less interested this week but maybe Tom O’Brien is to blame for that.

I have not been able to figure out if NC State is a rival of ours. The Textile Bowl angle does not do it for me because you should get rings if you win bowl games and bowl games are not played in September (sorry Gamecock fans). I think both schools should be proud of their past influence on textiles but I am not even sure what the Textile Bowl trophy even looks like. I took a tour of the West Zone this past weekend but could not locate the trophy we won in last year’s game.

State is a lot like other schools Clemson faces in that they are only a rival in my mind when they beat us. In the last 30 games between the two schools Clemson has won 19 including five of seven and three in a row. I guess it is the fans at State that make me dislike the program and we have not had to hear a lot from them in recent years.

Up until this year we had the circus clown act of Chuck Amato to rile us up. His Ronald McDonald red shoes, red Oakley sunglasses and the hot tub were enough to get us going. Then you throw in the things that he can’t control like the chest and the voice and that took it to another level.

It was easy to rally around the idea of defeating this clown but State has not always had that either. In fact, Tom O’Brien might be the most boring head coach in America. He is not too far removed from Dick Sheridan either. And let’s face it, even though he is a former Tiger, Mike O’Cain was not Soupy Sales.

My college roommate calls State “Copycat U.” He says they have no original traditions so they copy others. Before renovations they used to run down a little hill following their cheerleaders who had little flags. They blew smoke in their tunnel area like Miami and a few hundred other schools. Their helmets looked like Stanford until O’Cain changed the uniforms to look like Georgia’s for a season. Now they look like the other Under Armor or Reebok teams. Heck, even their fight song is stolen (I know Clemson did not write Tiger Rag).

This game was big at one time in the late 1970s when State’s Ted Brown and Clemson’s Lester Brown thrilled us. We had the “Orange Shoe Game” in the 1960s when Clemson upset the Wolfpack. Woody Dantzler had the greatest game any Tiger ever played in 2001 when he went for over 500 total yards in a 45-37 win. But was it a rivalry? I am not sure.

I have been to Raleigh for the Clemson game almost every year since 1978 and have seen some good games. For a period of about ten years there it seemed like it would rain when these two teams got together in Carter-Finley Stadium.

In the 1930s and 1940s these teams played eight times in Charlotte and that might have been special for this rivalry but still it was a little before my time.

So is this a rivalry? I think FSU coming into the league in the early 1990s might have taken a little away from this game. Also the Clemson-Georgia Tech game seems to be a bigger game each year so this is yet another rivalry that has emerged. I believe most Clemson fans would rank State behind South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida State and Georgia Tech in terms of a rival. I would guess that State would fall in the same neighborhood as Maryland. The Tigers don’t play Virginia every year so the Cavs may not be as big a deal as NC State now.

I do believe NC State cares about football and wants to do what it takes to be successful in football. But I also believe they do not have the resources to be as good as Clemson in this head to head matchup each year. Clemson is more of a football school and has a better chance to be successful long-term compared to State.

O’Brien will do one thing that will help the rivalry and one thing that will hurt the rivalry. The Wolfpack will eventually improve under O’Brien. They will become a much more solid team and program under his watch. This will obviously help the ole’ Textile Bowl.

But he won’t invoke the sense hatred. In fact he won’t invoke any emotions from rival schools. Georgia fans dislike Spurrier. Michigan fans could not stand Woody and the Buckeyes felt the same way about Bo. How do you dislike vanilla? How do you hate a librarian? O’Brien will wear normal looking shoes and normal looking sunglasses. He won’t look like Bozo the Clown and he doesn’t sound like Tony Soprano. In the end it will take a few losses to NC State to get your blood boiling back in the rivalry and I think that has a much better chance of happening under O’Brien.

In the opener I was excited to see the Noles, their band, Bobby Bowden, their helmets and everything that surrounds FSU football. The last two weeks I was just excited to see the Tigers run down the hill and I knew I had a chance to see James Davis, C.J. Spiller, Phillip Merling and Ricky Sapp. I was excited to see the development of Cullen Harper and how Jacoby Ford’s role would continue to increase. I want to see if the Tigers have swagger. In the end that is all I need (besides two tickets if anyone has any they are looking to sell).

One last point—yesterday I wrote about the game being a must win game. I received some e-mails and wanted to clear the air on that one. I was not trying to say it was a must win because I would change the way I felt about the program if they lost. I was making the point that each week in a season the importance of each game grows and each week the fans view the game as a must win. If you don’t think that is the case check back in to Tigernet Monday morning if Clemson does not win.

Be careful and see you guys in Raleigh! Go Tigers!

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