If you could somehow take away the Cheez-Its being dumped onto Dabo Swinney's head and replace them with a CFP Gatorade shower, if you could transport the celebration from Disney World to Jerry World, would the reaction from the head coach have been much different?
Think back to some of Clemson's biggest postseason victories over the years, from South Beach to Glendale to Arlington to Tampa to somewhere in Northern California, and the glee we witnessed last night on the field and in the locker room was a lot like what we saw when there were bigger trophies riding shotgun on the plane home.
Of course, initially it's a little bit jarring to see the head man going bonkers over a victory in a lesser bowl game. Of course some social-media windbags are going to snicker at the sight and sound of him leaning into a 20-13 victory over Iowa State, a day after they snickered at him wearing an all-orange jumpsuit to his press conference with counterpart Matt Campbell.
He's criticized for just about everything these days, including saying things out loud about the transfer portal that almost every coach out there is thinking. So of course some voices out there will roll their eyes at him taking the microphone and saying his program showed "the heart of a champion" two days before the top four teams play for the championship that matters.
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But while on the surface it might seem fair to say he went a bit overboard, that his exuberance did not befit the circumstances, the reality is his celebration perfectly fit the big-picture context of the 2021 season.
In the run-up to a supposedly monster showdown with Georgia in the season opener, one of the big what-if questions was whether the ACC would be strong enough to allow Clemson to still get back to the CFP with a loss.
As in, it was just assumed that the Tigers would be able to run the table after the Sept. 4 game in Charlotte.
College football routinely punishes conventional wisdom, and it made an absolute mockery of that following Georgia's 10-3 victory.
They barely got out of their own stadium alive against Georgia Tech after failing to snap the ball and fall down with seven seconds left.
For a while, it seemed much more likely that Clemson would score touchdowns for the other team than for itself.
It was so bad that William Christopher Swinney, through our observations the most optimistic human on the planet, likened the offensive ineptitude to a foul stench in a vehicle that no amount of air freshener could chase away.
Decades ago a defensive coordinator named Reggie Herring said "we got who we got" in response to criticism of an awful defense.
We never thought we'd hear such a condemnation from the man who despises even a shred of negativity, but at points this season the reality was so glaring that it was impossible to ignore.
Two days ago Swinney said both Iowa State and Clemson were "a few plays away" from the playoff, which sort of made you chuckle as you thought back to a saying his predecessor used to utter to the great frustration of fans.
The truth is that Clemson was also a few plays away from 4-8, which would have been a long way from eating all those bags of Cheez-Its in the days before the bowl game.
The six consecutive playoff trips, the recruiting rampage and the culture it was all built on created the feeling over the years that the Swinney fortress was bulletproof. It was just three years ago, by the way, when we were wondering if 44-16 meant Swinney was pulling away from the Saban Dynasty.
As it turns out Clemson doesn't have an exclusive monopoly on generational quarterbacks. As it turns out this program isn't immune to a once-in-a-generation run of injuries. As it turns out there are guys leaving here for the portal like they are everywhere else. As it turns out Clemson has some work to do in adapting to the new NIL landscape in which competitors are basing their recruiting pitches on business plans.
Moving forward, easily the most important subplot will be what happens at quarterback over the next few months.
The two-game sample size from 2020 strongly suggested the offense was going to be just fine with DJ Uiagalelei taking over for Trevor Lawrence.
The 13-game sample size in 2021 strongly suggests that Clemson is going to need more juice at the quarterback position, whether it comes from the current starter or the kid coming in from Texas in 10 days.
But in the moment, a 10-3 record after the 10-3 score in the opener feels like an accomplishment very much worthy of the exuberance we witnessed last night.
Disagree? Let's go back to late October and revisit your thoughts about whether 10 wins were possible.
Or even Nov. 13, the day these guys couldn't even block UConn.
Yeah, the head coach and everyone below him are justified in feeling like the Big Cheese even if this season fell well short of the biggest trophy.
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