Due to a wedding involving a Miami alum, I was unable to see the live broadcast of Clemson-FSU. Leave it to Miami fans to make college football less enjoyable for everyone else. Fortunately, due to the beauty of ESPN3, I was able to watch a replay during the week when I was stuck at work late. Unfortunately, despite the outcome, I wasn’t entirely impressed by the game against FSU. The FSU game doesn’t give me a lot of confidence going into the Tech game. However there may be some upside out there for Clemson.

On the downside for Clemson…

Clemson beat FSU by 5 point in Clemson. And FSU was missing many of their starting offensive skill players. And FSU gave a lot away to Clemson in the way of many stupid penalties (so many I lost count).

Now Clemson has to go on the road, in a tough place to play, to face a team that’s actually pretty tough to beat regardless of location. This is the first road trip for Clemson’s talented true freshman. I’m not aware (not that I’ve really checked) of important injuries to Virginia Tech. And it seems unlikely that VT is going to provide a lot of freebies in the way of stupid penalties and turnovers. For all these reason, there’s a very good reason why VT is favored by 7 points.

On the upside for Clemson…

Clemson is still the underdog. I feel like Clemson plays better (not that they necessarily win) when they are the underdog.

Tonight at 6 we’ll see what happens.

Road wins in the ACC can be nothing if not few and far between. So it is with no small amount of pleasure that I can say that Clemson beat a pretty good (20-8) Florida State team in Tallahassee.

[Trevor] Booker hit four straight free throws in the final 11 seconds and blocked a 3-point shot by the Seminoles’ Deividas Dulkys with 5 seconds left that could have tied it.

But it was the outside sniping of sophomore guard Andre Young from nearby Albany, Ga., that made the difference. His 3-point basket gave the Tigers a 49-47 lead with 30 seconds left.

Free throws? We won the game on free throws? It certainly looks like it. ESPN says Booker was 7-9 (78%) and the the team was 15-19 (79%). FSU was only 14-24 from the charity stripe.

Good win, Clemson!

• Clemson hosts 10-1 Western Carolina tonight at 7:30 PM. The CBS Sports preview notes that Clemson is 9-0 all time against the Catamounts. It should be a good game.
• Collegiate Baseball Newspaper released its preseason Top40. Clemson checks in at #16. Other notables include Virginia (#3), Georgia Tech (#6), Florida State (#7), Miami (#12) and North Carolina (#13). Such is life in the ACC baseball world: being a top-20 team means being a mediocre conference team.
• Kyle Parker’s future as a football player remains up in the air. As I’ve said before, I’d take the money and run if I were him. Fortunately for Clemson football fans, I’m sure most college athletes don’t think like me.

Outside the lines…

• Clemson is escalating it’s war on the squirrels. I’m not exactly sure what university the squirrels belong to, or even what sport they play, but I support this just war.

  Honestly though, they’re talking about trapping and euthanizing about 200 squirrels, and I’m wondering why they’re going to let anyone eat the goddamn things?

• Clemson’s Mayor Abernathy trots out his standard defense for everything he proposes, “If we only save one life, we’ve done our job.” No you haven’t, you dumb fuck! You’re job is not to intrude in everyone’s life to immeasurable levels to “save one life.” You don’t understand how much I hate this guy. I’d rather the mayorship be run by Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier.

  In this case the mayor is defending a proposed text messaging ban. Frankly, the fines for these things tend to be so miniscule, and the chances of being caught so small, that the bans are pretty much symbolic. But let me be very clear about one thing: STAY OFF YOUR GODDAMN PHONE IN ALL CAPACITIES WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING YOU FUCKING DIPSHITS!

  And stay off my lawn, too!

As you’ve surely noticed, posting has been a bit sparse around here for, oh, say, the last year. We’re not dead, just older. Plus, speaking for myself personally, I found Larry Williams’ blog to be so thorough and so high in quality that it was largely a waste of time to try to write something that would cover the same ground and be of lesser quality. But now his blog has gone premium. And with it goes my easy access to information and my excuse for not posting more often.

On that note, here’s some news:

• SI notes that Chansi Stuckey is making an impact in Cleveland after his trade from the Jets.
• Speaking of the Jets, you may have heard that they brought back Justin Miller to return kicks. That’s true. But after only a month he has again been let go.
• Thursday night’s late game should have your attention. Oregon State (#13) goes 40 miles up the road to face Oregon (#7) for the next installment of the “Civil War”. This game has two top-15 teams, a heated in-state rivalry, and the winner goes to the Rose Bowl. This is a compelling game.

… and some opinion

• Bobby Bowden is out at Florida State, and from my view from the couch, it’s about damn time. It seems everyone else in the world thinks he deserves at least another year, if not coach-for-life status at FSU. I don’t think he deserves another year, and I bet that if he was named coach for life that he’d quickly become the victim in a suspicious death.

  I understand that teams ebb and flow. Yes Penn State did hold on to JoePa during some down years earlier this decade and Penn State recovered quite well. However, I don’t see that happening for Bowden. To explain why, I’ll use a cliche. JoePa lives to coach, whereas Bowden coaches to live. JoePa strikes me as being an intense guy who just wants to coach. Bowden strikes me, at this point, as an old softie who only ambles about the sidelines because he fears that he’ll face the same post-coaching fate that met Bear Bryant.

  Bobby Bowden did deserve to go out on his own terms and he did deserve just one more year to have a farewell tour. Unfortunately that year should have been about 3 years ago. I don’t think Bobby Bowden knows how to quit, and that has served him well throughout his career, but that means that he has to leave it up to someone else to make the decision of when he’s done.

Clemson – It’s difficult to imagine that any Tiger fan wasn’t pleased with last week’s dominance of Wake Forest. That’s how a fan wants every game to look. Unfortunately, Dabo has yet to prove that he’s adept at starting, let alone extending, a winning streak. Plus, the situation from last week is largely unchanged. The season hinges on the impending game.

FSU – Holy cow! Not only did FSU orchestrate a remarkable comeback last night, but Bobby Bowden actually did not look dead. He actually shook his finger at some people and showed some emotion. (Although, at this point, the FSU coaching staff could be easily confused for a busload from the retirement village.)

A good FSU is an additional barrier between Clemson and the ACCCG. Nonetheless, it’s good to see Bobby Bowden showing some signs of life because, frankly, it’s sad to see him standing both helpless and hopefully on the sidelines.

I just saw this on my google calendar that they now provide public calendars to most sports teams schedules. So far, I have subscribed to the Tigers football and basketball schedules. Each entry is slotted in the times and has a small football or basketball icon on it.

Unless you’ve been living in a cubicle shaped hole the last few days like this blogger, you’re well aware that the basketball team was unable to overcome Wake Forest who shot a ridiculous 60% from the floor on Sunday.

The good news is that the ACC Tournament starts tomorrow and we play Georgia Tech at 2PM. Georgia Tech finished last in the conference and Clemson beat them twice already this season. Unfortunately playing GT is also bad news because it means that we don’t get a bye in the first round. It also means that, if the Tigers win as they should, they will face Florida State at 2PM on Friday. FSU, you may recall, has already beaten the Tigers twice this year.

Note: Clemson mayor Larry Abernathy is working to save the Astro. He “has proposed that the theatre be refurbished for a three-screen complex, featuring foreign films [ed from Canada?], as well as a concert venue allowing local individuals to showcase their talents.” I wish him no luck in his task as I suspect the building is worth more as scrap and new parking places than it is as a venue for foreign films. Last I checked, Clemson was not lacking in venues to show movies, nor was there an outrageous demand for foreign films. Moreover, the old building isn’t even nice to look at. Unless someone can come up with better ideas and the funding to implement them, I’ll be more than happy to contribute to the demolition costs.

In case you missed tonight’s game against Florida State, congratulations!

Actually it wasn’t that bad for about the first 3/4 of the game. But unfortunately the team decided to squander a 19 point lead by not rebounding a damn thing and making sure that every shot they took was blocked.

Hats off to Florida State for playing tough and walking away from Littlejohn with a solid W.