Why is post titled Wite out? Not because of some now-unoriginal gimmick, fortunately. Wite Out only because I didn’t want to use “News & Notes” again and my handy bottle of quick dry correction fluid was the first thing I saw.

• Duke plays at Clemson at 9PM. USA Today says the Tigers are looking for revenge. The line hasn’t been posted yet, but as game time approaches you should be able to find it at VegasInsider or the Daily Line section at ESPN. This game should be extra fun for me as I’ll be at a party hosted by Duke grads.

  UPDATE 2010-01-23 09:10 AMThe spread shows that Duke is favored by 1 point.

• Willy Korn is heading to Marshall… at least to visit.
• Kevin Steele is staying at Clemson, and he’s even saying the right things about why.
  

  “Regardless of what people might believe, it’s a factual statement that money was never discussed in this process with Clemson University,” he said. “I’ve never talked to (athletic director) Terry Don Phillips or Dabo Swinney about one nickel. Not one nickel. And actually did the other. I told Dabo, ‘Coach, if you want to discuss money it’s going to offend me because it’s not about money.’ “

  To be open about this, when I heard the incorrect news that Steele was leaving, I didn’t care. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the D’s performance this year. The worst thing about the situation to me was not that he was leaving, but that we’d have to find a replacement on the fly. When news broke that he was staying, all the speculation was that he would be getting a nice raise from Clemson. That didn’t seem like such a good idea to me. He came in and, I would say, met — not exceeded — expectations. So why should he get a raise just for being contacted by alma mater? If it turned out that he was playing that game, and that Clemson played along, then I would have been pretty upset.

  Hopefully the Steele’s defense looks better in 2010.

• Clemson University apparently had extremely high voter turnout in this past election. “‘It is widely recognized that young people influenced the 2008 election by voting in larger numbers,’ said Campus Compact President Maureen Curley.” Seeing how that election came out, I don’t think I’d be bragging about that.

Addendum:

• Bad good PR: Stuckey to donate $10 for each point scored against Duke to Haitian Relief. Look, generosity is fantastic. That’s great. However, getting a press release as an NFL player earning over $400k/yr for committing to an approximately $700 donation is pretty silly. I’m hoping that it was supposed to say $100 per point. Just to be clear, the amount itself is fine, it’s the press release about the amount that bothers me.
• It appears that Kevin Steele will get a huge raise, amounting to a reported $200k on top of his current $375k/yr contract. Look, I don’t have any fucking problem with coaches making a lot of money. But I have a huge fucking problem with coaches getting gigantic raises only 1 slightly-better-than-mediocre year into a 3 year contract. If Kevin Steele deserves more money, give him an incentive based contract, and not this bullshit. If this raise is real, then everyone involved in pushing this raise through deserves a giant FUCK YOU!

• In the immediate aftermath of Clemson’s dominating win over UNC, fans stormed the court. Some people apparently didn’t care for it. I think I can summarize my opinion by relating my thoughts from the time. I never even considered that it was inappropriate. Instead I thought “it would be nice if more people joined in because only about 1/2 the court is covered.
• Clemson’s next game is Saturday @ NC State. Game time is 12 noon. Raycom will have the television coverage. Lines haven’t been posted as of the time of my writing this.
• In other news, mark your calendars for Clemson’s spring game. “Clemson’s Spring football game at Memorial Stadium will be held April 10 and have a 4:00 PM start.“

Line update: Clemson is favored by 4.5.

Today is the day of the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl. I can’t say I’m too excited — I’m not too excited about bowl season this year in general, and I’m about as excited about this particular game as Jamie Cumbie.

My primary fear before before this game was that the team would have already given up and/or lost focus well before the opening kickoff. The only bowl game I’ve cared enough to watch this season was the Oregon State-BYU game in which the Beavers had clearly given up on their season after missing their chance at the Rose Bowl in their last regular season game. The pre-game press for Clemson has been about how the team is responding to avoid such a let down performance. Dabo, in some potentially unfortunate foreshadowing, had this to say a couple days before Christmas:

Swinney recalled years when players were late or missed practice and meetings.

“They’ve been where they’re supposed to be,” he said. “And we haven’t any guys getting into trouble. That’s usually a sign of a pretty focused team.”

Of course that was before the four players showed up late to the hotel and earned themselves spots on the bench for the game.

I’ll certainly be pleasantly surprised if Clemson wins — and the ACC would love any win over an SEC (or, at this point, ANY) opponent. However, a loss will mark a season that is as defined by success as it is defined by failure, that will not spare Dabo negative comparisons to his predecessor, that will raise questions about how such a supposedly inspirational leader can end on a three-game losing streak, and that will leave little optimism for next year’s talent-depleted team.

• 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!

Making my memories of that horrible day in October that much worse the latest ESPN Bottom 10 ranks Maryland as #9. Maryland, in case you hadn’t noticed, finished the season at 2-10 — their only other win coming in overtime against JMU.

Following up on last night’s post, here’s some more information about the turnover battle. It turns out the turnover battle is a good proxy for the outcome of Clemson games this year.

• Six times Clemson won the turnover battle. Clemson won all of those games.
• Four times the turnover battle was tied. Clemson went 2-2 in those contests.
• Three times Clemson lost the turnover battle. Clemson lost those 3 games.

I’ve been really down on the defense, especially since the GT game. I said this about last year’s defense and I’ll say it about this year’s: they’re good, but they’re not good enough.

In the GT game, the defense allowed 4 touchdowns, “forced” 4 field goals, and produced only one real stop. Not a great performance by the defense. Clemson lost by 5 pts.

However, on the other side of the ball, look at the missed opportunities. One field goal was missed and there were two interceptions. It was a one possession game and Clemson threw away three possessions.

I was even upset with the defense after the USCe game. Looking back at the stats, especially after the ACCCG, the D’s play looked great by comparison. Yes they gave up 4 touchdowns and 2 field goals. But they also made an interception, recovered a fumble, and forced 3 punts.

It was the offense that blew that game. Jamie Harper fumbled on the first drive, foreshadowing that this game was going to turn out about like the ’08 ‘Bama game. What followed was this sequence: interception, punt, punt, fumble, punt, punt, punt, punt, field goal, turnover-on-downs, turnover-on-downs. Say that list out loud and you force yourself to realize how bad it was.

• interception
• punt
• punt
• fumble
• punt
• punt
• punt
• punt
• field goal
• turnover on downs
• turnover on downs

To further emphasize how pathetically the offense performed, note that 4 of those punts were on 3-and-outs. The 2nd fumble was on a 3-play drive. In total, the offense produced 260 yards, only 48 of which were on the ground.

The defense wasn’t good enough. And they got gashed for a lot of a yards. But there are few defenses anywhere who will look good when the offense can’t stay on the field.

It has been decided: Clemson is going to play Kentucky in a rematch of the 2006 Music City Bowl in Nashville.

The silver lining about falling to such a lowly bowl is that the opponent should be more beatable. Unfortunately the opponent is still an SEC team, so I give Clemson about a 25% chance of winning this game on December 27th.