Just like 1981, these Tigers are finding their way, game-by-game

Saturday afternoon, while awaiting the start of the Maryland football game and as much for my own amusement as anything else, I posted a breakdown on orangewhite.com detailing what had happened each of the previous eight times that Clemson opened its season with a 6-0 record.

Shortly thereafter someone responded with a comment: “And what does that have to do with this year’s team?”

Good question.

The answer, of course, is ‘nothing.’

Except for historical context.

And historical context will be prominent, though no longer front-and-center, this week when Clemson tries to extend its unbeaten streak to eight games, while also honoring members of the 1981 team on the 30th anniversary of their national championship.

The air is getting a bit thin at Clemson’s level of the stratosphere these days.

Just a handful of unbeaten teams remain in college football, and Clemson is one of them – now 7-0 for just the fourth time in the school’s 116-year football playing history.

Two of those previous 7-0 teams went on to finish their seasons undefeated – Frank Howard’s 1948 team, which ran the table and capped an 11-0 season with a 24-23 victory over Missouri in the Gator Bowl, and Danny Ford’s 1981 national champions.

Hype is cheap, and it’s easy for the ‘rest of us’ to start getting ahead of ourselves, if we haven’t already.

Clemson’s 56-45 victory over Maryland Saturday night offered powerful affirmation of what Dabo Swinney, his staff and players are doing, game-by-game, this fall; as well as an equally-powerful warning about what can happen on any given Saturday against any given opponent.

What happened Saturday, and what will happen next weekend, has nothing to do with what happened 30 years ago, just as it has nothing to do with Clemson’s most recent foray into the unfamiliar ground of the late-October unbeatens, when the 2000 Tigers plummeted from 8-0 to 9-3.

Yet there are parallels worth considering.

The 1981 Tigers were, at times, dominant. But they were most adept at finding ways to win, even when it was ugly – like the 10-8 tug-of-war at Chapel Hill or the 17-7 home victory over NC State and an early 13-5 escape against Tulane.

Coming off a 6-5 season in which the Tigers managed to win just two of six ACC games, there were reasons then for expecting a ‘same old Clemson’ stumble when the Tigers arrived at their seven-game mark unbeaten for then just the second time in school history.

Saturday night, with the Tigers down 35-17 and apparently reeling, those kinds of thoughts seemed again appropriate to the situation.

And yet these Tigers, like those Tigers 30 years ago, not only didn’t buy into it, they never stopped playing long enough to even consider the possibility.

They rolled up their sleeves, kept working, and, just like the national champions, found a way – their way, and a very different way, but in the only way that matters, precisely the same.

Their performance, like that list of unbeaten starts, is now part of the historical context for whatever happens next.

These Tigers are writing their own history, game by game. And the plot-line gets more entertaining, and the stakes higher, week by week.

Just like 1981.