CLEMSON -- As one supposedly seismic development was occurring in real time on ESPN, the ACC Network was broadcasting another supposedly seismic development from four years ago.
We say "supposedly" because, well, it shouldn't be a news flash that things can change very quickly in a game that is defined by its punishing unpredictability.
Give a gift subscription to Tigerillustrated.com!
If you switched over to the replay of the 2018 national title game, maybe you were reminded that it was not just 44-16 after four quarters but 44-16 after three quarters.
Yes, it was that much of a beatdown Clemson administered to Nick Saban's Alabama dynasty. Previously his worst defeat was two touchdowns. This one was 28 and probably should've been worse.
Four years after orange-ageddon in California, Saban was back in the Golden State watching in person last night while Dabo Swinney was back in the Carolinas watching from afar.
Two men who ruled the sport so thoroughly so recently that large numbers of people were growing weary of Clemson-Alabama fatigue. And one coach who walked out of Levi's Stadium that night looking like the man and the leader who could eclipse Saban.
Clemson got back to the championship a year later and had the misfortune of its final obstacle being perhaps the greatest offense in college football history. Alabama scorched its way to a title in 2020 and then was upended a year ago by Kirby Smart and Georgia.
The brilliant Bryce Young ends his college career with no national titles. Stetson Bennett will end his with two. That's the punishing and even astonishing unpredictability we talked about.
Both men, Swinney and Saban, are now facing predicaments and challenges that were almost totally undetectable as recently as December of 2020. That's when the Tigers were coming off a boat-racing of Notre Dame in the ACC title game and the pyrotechnic Tide was cruising.
Predicaments and challenges that in some ways are different, but in a fundamental way the same -- and, coincidentally enough, articulated by Smart after his machine completed easily the most savage beatdown in national championship game history:
"The disease that creeps into your program is called entitlement. I've seen it first-hand, and if you can stomp it out with leadership we can stay hungry. We have a saying around our place: 'We eat off the floor.' And if you're willing to eat off the floor, you can be special."
Official NCAA Transfer Portal Tracker & Database at Tigerillustrated.com
We're not necessarily saying Clemson and Alabama have become entitled, and we're not even saying Georgia will be able to continue eating off the floor moving forward (it's extremely hard to maintain, which was Smart's point).
But there have been slices of the past two seasons of watching the Tigers and Tide that have told you they don't look the same.
Part of this is of course related to talent. Clemson's playmaking talent at receiver isn't close to what it was before, and the same is true in Tuscaloosa. The Tide have had a spectacular quarterback the past two years while Clemson has not, yet the regression at receiver, offensive line and defense left Saban's team in way too many close games the past two years and not worthy of a playoff spot this season.
Clemson's six losses in two seasons -- after seven losses over the previous six years -- is attributable in large part to deficiencies at quarterback.
But the Tigers also weren't nearly as good on defense as expected in 2022. And that probably wasn't solely a talent thing, indicated by assistant Nick Eason late in the season when he said he was trying to find the "eye of the Tiger" in some defensive linemen who were supposed to comprise the top front in college football.
"You're either born with it or you're not," he said then.
That type of comment gets your attention.
And that gets us to the entirely legitimate question:
Has Clemson lost some of its edge? Entitlement might be too strong a word, but are the Tigers and Tide the precise examples Smart was referring to when he said he's seen programs get too impressed with themselves, too comfortable?
Join Tigerillustrated.com subscribers on The West Zone message board!
It's probably not at all fair to call this an existential crisis, because there are a lot of programs out there that would love to be in Clemson's position right now.
Bob Stoops won a national title in his second season at Oklahoma, couldn't win another, and yet his body of work in Norman is regarded as pretty exquisite.
Ohio State was supposedly on the verge of eclipsing Alabama after its 2014 championship but hasn't won another.
These examples and plenty others aren't illustrations of failure as much as how immensely hard it is to win big. How difficult it is to get there and stay there.
A lot harder than all of us believed back when CFP trips seemed like an afterthought from 2015 to 2020.
But we can simultaneously admire the overall body of work relative to most every other team out there while also wondering if there are some cracks that need to be addressed. Some complacency and softness that stuck out at times this year in ways it almost never did before.
Not that Swinney is likely to get into a public accounting of how and why this program seems to have lost some of its edge, relentlessness and toughness both mental and physical.
Not that this program is doomed to be on the outside looking in forever hereafter as a result of the clinic Smart and the Bulldogs have orchestrated the past two years.
Yes, Georgia seems far ahead of Clemson. But also far ahead of Alabama and everyone else out there.
But the lessons in light of last night, and of that night four years ago, seem hard to ignore.
Maybe this program needs to be less impressed with itself.
Maybe it needs to do more eating off the floor.
January DEALS on officially-licensed CLEMSON apparel and gear at The Tiger Fan Shop HERE!
