Re: What are reasonable expectations for our football program?

quozzel

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Oct 22, 2014, 1:35 PM

> Given our facilities, coaching staff salaries, and
> overall fan support... what results should we
> reasonably expect?
>
> - Beating Syracuse, WF, etc every year
> - Beating FSU at least 5 out of every 10 years (Dabo
> said this, not me

)
> - Beating SCAR 6-7 times every 10 years
> - Playing in ACC championship gane 5 out of every 10
> years (see FSU above)
> - Winning ACC championship gane at least 3 times
> every 10 years
> - Winning national championship once every 10 years
> - Graduating players at a high level
> - Not putting up with any discipline problems
>
>
> Are these reasonable? Your thoughts?

1. We should beat Syracuse, Wake, and BC 9 times out of 10. You're occasionally going to run into one of those programs when they've got a really good coach (Wake under Jim Grobe in 2004, BC under Tom O'Brien with Matt Ryan in about the same time) and your own program is down...but sorry, sometimes the stars just align for those guys and you're going to get one of those programs in a peak. Duke is in a major peak right now under Cutcliffe, and they're taking out people left and right they have no business on paper beating.

2. I'd adjust this to about 4 out 10. FSU is closer to a much deeper talent pool than we are and is the one program in the ACC that can legitimately out-recruit Clemson, and they have similar facilities and a similar fan-base. If we do better than that, it's kudos to the Clemson coaching staff.

3. South Carolina has been held back by institutional incompetence and good-ole-boy politics that seems to have largely evaporated. South Carolina is dead-even with us in terms of facilities and has a better TV contract thanks to their links with the SEC. They're also in better position geographically to recruit - they're closer to the Low Counties, where there's a big pool of HS talent and no major university on hand to dip into it, and they're also closer to Charlotte and coastal NC than we are. They also play a tougher schedule, week in and week out, than we do. It means their win-loss record is not likely to be as good as ours year-to-year, but they're going to be used to playing faster, tougher teams, in tougher games, than Clemson is. (This MATTERS, by the way.) Against that, achieving "momentum" is going to be more difficult for them because it means in a bad year - which they're having right now - they can sink like a stone and lose 6-8 games faster than you can say "overscheduling". So basically when you add it up, achieving a .500 record against South Carolina is going to likely be the norm unless they just tank it again and get a bad coach post-Spurrier. THEY HAVE A BOATLOAD OF MONEY BECAUSE THEY NOW PLAY IN THE SEC. This buys good coaching, it buys exposure, it buys recruits. This is a huge advantage for them, like it or not.

4. Playing in the ACC title game 3 out of every 10 years, right now, looks likely. FSU is ahead of us and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Our conference just got much tougher with the addition of Louisville. You're going to get other programs having peak years from time to time. Unless there's some re-alignment (which I've heard is likely), right now 3 years out of 10 is probably going to be the norm.

5. I'd adjust that to about 2 out of 10 to outright win the ACC. Right now there's no power in the Coastal but several could emerge. Miami is stuck in neutral and has no facilities of their own since they became renters in the Dolphins stadium and lost the Orange Bowl...but they're still sitting in BY FAR the single most-impressive talent pool in the country...you can make a Top-25 program out of Miami high school recruits that The U doesn't offer. The fact that Miami is somehow not a perennial Top-10 program anymore shows you how anti-football current Miami prez Donna Shalala has been. VT is being held back by a stale coaching staff but that Tidewater region is loaded and VT is not far off from being a Clemson in terms of resources and fan base. UNC can be a power if they ever stop shooting themselves in the foot with silly NCAA infractions.

6. Winning the national title every 10 years? No way, no way. We've won once, and that was, what, 34 years ago? I'll agree we should do better than that but if you win once every twenty years you're doing well. There's 25 or so programs, nationally, that are as big or bigger than Clemson.

7 and 8: Graduating players? No discipline problems? I'm down with that. One advantage that Clemson has is its isolation. Sure, you can find drugs, girls, and problems anywhere...but you do have to work harder to find trouble at Clemson than you do other places. That tends to attract a culture of kids who are here for school and football, and it's not attractive to the likes of Stephen "Achilles" Garcia, who went to South Carolina because, in his own words, "they treat you like a God here." Dabo's done a very good job of embracing that aspect of Clemson, selling it to families, and it meshes well with Clemson's prevailing ethic anyhow.

Just my own take.

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- Beating Syracuse, WF, etc every year -----Maybe not that specific. But not drop games that we shouldn't drop

- Beating FSU at least 5 out of every 10 years (Dabo said this, not me

) ----Sure. That would show that we are at the top and beating the top. Not many teams have a 50% winning over FSU. Might be ambitious, but we shouldn't feel that we can't beat them every time.

- Beating SCAR 6-7 times every 10 years ---- Yes. Goes back to not dropping games we shouldn't drop.

- Playing in ACC championship gane 5 out of every 10 years (see FSU above) ----50% seems high. Lets see if Louisville comes on strong before set that bar at half. But beating FSU 5 times probably gets us 5 trips to the ACCCG.

- Winning ACC championship gane at least 3 times every 10 years ---Does anyone have a 30% winning percentage of conference championships.

- Winning national championship once every 10 years ----I'd hate to get rid of a good coach every 10 years if we didn't win a championship. Lets see how the playoffs shape up. I'd say a finish no worse than 15-20 would be a good bar now.

- Graduating players at a high level ---thats the players choice. Recruit players that can handle the academics, give them resources to meet the requirements and get out of their way.

- Not putting up with any discipline problems ----see above. Thats their choice and it depends on what they do. Discipline should be a case by case basis.

What are reasonable expectations for our football program?