Pre-SCar Sunday Thoughts

I want to start this one off with a big congratulations and "Thank You" to the senior class honored yesterday. I'll admit that we get after people's ass here at STS (though only because we love Clemson and want to win a bunch of football games) but I will say that if you'd tell anyone after 2010 we would win an ACC Championship and have three consecutive double digit win seasons, they would tell you that you are crazy. So big ups to the guys yesterday, they are the first class in 20 years to win games the way they did-and yes, Coach Dabo does get credit for (A) praising the "dandy dozen" then (B) putting The Chad in position and in motion to make these guys better.

Next, I'd like to hammer "Out" games. I understand yesterday was a Purple Out to commemorate the military services we are fortunate to benefit from. There are many great war heroes from Clemson and amongst those heroes many who lost their lives too soon. I realize that more than anyone and I'd like to propose a patch on the Clemson jersey to praise our veterans. Praise our military every week with a jersey patch or helmet sticker instead of running out in all purple. I wasn't going to do a uniform review this year, but now I must.

The football game-sans Blanks' injury-went about as we expected. Blanks will be missed against the Gamecocks. In fact, one of the first things that Dr. B wanted to discuss yesterday was how Spurrier would take advantage of not having Travis Blanks in the game next week. We have struggled at Safety this year and this definitely doesn't help.

On the national front, Clemson will surely move up after both Oregon and Baylor got their respective asses handed to them last night. Obviously, Clemson can squeeze its way into a BCS bowl by taking care of business (and I'll let everyone else discuss all the scenarios below because I don't care...beat SCar or none of this crap matters).

Dr. B and myself got into a friendly discussion about Clemson's football season and about this coming weekend. What we've decided is the winner gets to laugh at the loser and the loser makes a larger than usual contribution to the Clemson University Class of 2003 project fund. We have agreed to do this henceforth so that the winner can talk trash to the loser, but with fear of retribution. The guidelines to prove the winner are negotiable but must include a provision on the Carolina game. Go ahead and vote below who you think will prevail, Figurefour or the rocket scientist! It is all for a good cause. Or tell us Dr. B Figure Four is full of shit!

In other news, it is definitely now Florida State and Alabama. None of us know what will happen with Winston and why all these items open up at this date but I'll bet FSU and Winston make it to the MNC game with him because there will be no charges from Florida against him. There are too many questions, first of which is why does this come out while he is rolling into the Heisman chase? This is a year old case that wasn't actively pursued so why now are they killing this guy when they (the Tallahassee police) could have jumped on his ass 10-12 months ago. Is there a cover up in Tallahassee or are they just incompetent? I guess we'll see what the State of Florida folks think. I have no clue what the truth is and will not persecute Winston unnecessarily because I could see this breaking either way when/if it goes to trial.

I really have little else to discuss. Everything is focused on this coming weekend (sans slamming 15 lbs of ham and turke Thursday). If Clemson wins, I believe we claim success. We lost a game we kind of expected early then finish strong...that is fine by me. Lose again to SCar and that is half a decade of destruction. If Tajh plays the way he played in the second half of the LSU game, we're golden. If he gets jumpy as he did last year, he'll walk into another 6 sacks and lose the football game for Clemson. When Tajh starts acting a fool (AKA, walks/runs into sacks or-worse-simply stares down his receiver) he hould be pulled because that is when shit rolls downhill. Boyd has earned all of our respect and deserves all the praise he gets. However, if he gets flustered (as he did against SCar last year), we are much better off going to the bench.

A lot will be settled this weekend...Bama will roll Allbarn but there will be the dingleberry known as Ohio State. I am perfectly happy that they get fucked sans the fact half of Ohio decided to move to South Carolina. I guess I should view this as an opportunity to tell them to join a real conference--or the Big East--or quit bitching and complaining.

I'll close it out with the most popular JC song, Crazy Women