Tigers are tired of lack of respect

While Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is remaining his usual calm self heading avoiding any bulletin board material heading into the Tigers matchup Saturday night with No. 6 Notre Dame the same could not be any further from the truth for his players who are growing very tired of the lack of respect being shown the Tigers this week.

"From what I've been seeing we have kind of never had that respect, and for some reason we can't get over that hump," quarterback Deshaun Watson said.

The lack of respect comes as a bit of a surprise for those close to the program. With wins since Swinney took over as head coach over 8th ranked Miami, No. 3 Virginia Tech, No. 7 LSU, No. 5 Georgia, No. 6 Ohio State and a season ending victory over No. 24 Oklahoma last season the players are left wondering what they have to do to earn the respect that they feel they deserve.

"We played Ohio State, beat them. We played Oklahoma, beat them. We played LSU, beat them. I'm not saying that we're going to beat the crap out of Notre Dame, but we've played big-name opponents and it hasn't really affected us at all," junior linebacker Ben Boulware said Monday.

While Dabo Swinney is not concerned with the polls right now calling the coaches poll that he fills out each week the, "biggest waste of time" the fact remains that the pollsters have not shown the Tigers much love in spite of their 3-0 record.

The Tigers began the season ranked 12th in the country before moving up to 9th before their trip to Louisville and despite winning the game on a short week the Tigers dropped to 10th and fell again this week without playing a game.

This week it is not only the media showing the Tigers a lack of respect. Notre Dame has been firing shots across the bow of the Tigers ship all week and those comments have finally awakened the normally quite Tigers.

It started earlier this week when Notre Dame star wide receiver took to twitter saying the game the game with the Tigers was going "savage" which immediately drew the attention Clemson starting safety Jayron Kearse who wasted no time Monday responding to those comments from Fuller.

"I actually favorited that tweet. It is what it is," Kearse said. " We will see when we get out there on Saturday after kickoff. We will see on Saturday whether or not he still has that mindset."

"They are getting a bit chippy. They are talking through the media. I hope the refs let us play football just know this is going to be a chippy game. I'm definitely going to be chippy. They can definitely expect that from me. They can expect some trash talking, they can expect all of that. I'm ready to go up against Will Fuller...I'm looking forward to meeting the running back in the hole, catching Will Fuller on the post, whatever it takes, man, I'm just ready for it."