A few comments came to mind as I read Larry’s post today, so I figured I’d put them here rather than leave them there.

Apparently rumors were circulating that Tommy Tuberville would be our new HC. Is anyone at all surprised that some genius fans mistook pure speculation for a done deal? Yeah, me either. But let me throw out there that I absolutely would not want to hire Tuberville. Certainly he’s a good coach and certainly he could succeed. However I think if he were fired by Auburn, he would come to Clemson with the stigma of a has been.

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Swinney apparently made some comparisons between things now and how they were under Spence. It made me think of a comment from Bowden several weeks ago which went along the lines of “it’s not like Spence forgot how to coordinate an offense.” (I hope I’m not making this up). Despite what Bowden said, maybe Spence did effectively forget. That can happen many of the best of people who are stressed, and arguably the Clemson job is much more stressful than the one at Toledo. Or maybe his ability to adapt was really so small that he got swamped by the DC’s he has to compete against.

I bring this up in part, because Bowden was given a rap for throwing people under a bus. But this is a clear example of Bowden not doing that. The fan base became rather indiscriminate in its criticisms of Bowden; effectively whatever he did was wrong, reminiscent of recruiting for Project Mayhem in Fight Club, “All right, if the applicant is young, tell him he’s too young. Old, too old. Fat, too fat,” etc.

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Moving on…

There’s no question Koenning is at least a little miffed at some of the heat his defense has taken this year.

The Tigers have given up some back-breaking plays late in games and have struggled to get off the field on third down, but they’ve also yielded just seven touchdowns in five ACC games.

And two of those touchdowns — both against Boston College — came after the offense gave away the ball deep in Clemson territory with interceptions.

The defense deserves credit for being very good. They also deserve criticism for not being better. They’re in a tough position, and they’re being put in that position by the offense. If the offense isn’t stepping up, the defense has to do it. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.

Thomas Williams, writing for TigerNet, complains about BC, specifically they way they amplify the band and the student section.

Great football programs don’t place microphones in front of their band. Great football programs don’t take that microphone and synch it up with speakers throughout the stadium

As I have never been to Chestnut Hill, I have no idea if he’s being honest, untruthful, misleading, or spot-on.

However, I do remember being at Wake Forest two years ago for the near-debacle. I remember being completely unimpressed by the amount of fake noise, as I will call it, that they had there. Sadly, I was reminded of that Wake Forest experience during my most recent trip to Death Valley for the GT game. Was the audio system amplifying the band and the students? No, I don’t think so. But they certainly didn’t shy away from playing horrible, awful, blaring music at almost every opportunity. It’s wrong. Even if it was what I consider to be good music, it would be equally as wrong. It is to be decided whether we resort to such crap because we aren’t a great program or if we aren’t a great program because we resort to such crap.