Boy, do I remember that game. I was living in South Carolina at the time. Clemson was coming off NCAA probation, but the ACC (led by Swofford at UNC) had added an additional year to Clemson's probation. That is why Clemson fans are nearly as rabid as NC State to get UNC on Death Penalty now. Anyway, Clemson was loaded and the talk among the Clemson fans I knew was that when Clemson went undefeated that year, they would tell the ACC to kiss their ***, and they would play in the Orange Bowl again to win the MNC like they did in 1981. They destroyed UVA to start the season by about 50-0, then went to athens where uga beat them late. Clemson was coming to Atlanta PO'ed and was ready to prove their loss was a fluke and they were still going to the Orange Bowl dammit.
IIRC, we jumped out to a 21-0 lead, but then Clemson showed up and tied the game midway in the 4th. They had the ball with a chance to take the lead, but our defense held, and Clemson got off a short punt. We got the ball around midfield and began driving. Lavette had a fantastic run to get us down to around the 3 or 4. and Easley ran it in with just a minute or two left. Seems like Clemson fumbled the kickoff and we wound up with the ball again to run out the clock, but I'm not certain.
That made us 3-0 (we beat Bama to start the season) and were #15 or so which was amazing given where we had been the previous 5 years. The next week, we lost at home to a 20+ point underdog awful NC State team that I think only won 3 games that year. The next week we were tied by an equally bad UVA team. That began our problems in Charlottesville that hopefully Johnson has fixed. The next week, we played Auburn on the road, and were down 41-0 at halftime and it would have been worse except we had a goal line stand on one Auburn drive. Possibly the worst half of defense I have ever seen us play, and it was the Black Watch though they didn't call themselves that until the next year. We came out the second half, shut Auburn down, and scored five straight TD's to get close, but Auburn hit a long pass for a TD to put the game away. It was like the teams traded uniforms at the half. Maybe the weirdest game I ever saw. We didn't make a bowl, but Roof, Dewberry, and crew took uga apart in athens. I believe we scored TD's on five straight possessions in that game, too. A strange, strange season, but for the first time in a long time we had some hope for our football future.
