South Carolina Football: Rival Clemson has equally embarrassing season opening loss

South Carolina football fans had a bad weekend. A huge buildup of offseason hype and a fan-led domination of College GameDay had Gamecocks everywhere ready for a USC victory over their border rival to the north. Instead, the North Carolina Tar Heels firmly outplayed the Gamecocks, and the South Carolina football team looked incompetent in the trenches.

It doesn’t negate the loss in any way, but Labor Day provided a small gift to South Carolina football fans that helped ease the pain of the ugly loss to the ‘Heels.

On Monday night, the rival Clemson Tigers completed the two-loss set of the Palmetto State vs. Tobacco Road season openers. Just two days after South Carolina looked bad in a loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels, Clemson lost in equally embarrassing fashion to the Duke Blue Devils.

Despite being ranked 9th in the country, Clemson looked terrible at times against the less-than-great Blue Devils.

On three separate occasions, Dabo Swinney’s team came away with zero points after moving the football within 10 yards of the end zone. The Tigers lost two fumbles inside the Duke 10-yard line, and they had a field goal blocked inside the 10. To make matters worse, Clemson had another field goal blocked from just outside the red zone, as well.

Clemson lost in lopsided fashion to Duke despite Mike Elko’s group not playing particularly well. Duke lost two fumbles of their own, went just 5-15 on 3rd downs, and were outgained by the Tigers.

Many on social media were curious as to what was causing Clemson’s severe struggles on Monday night. The answer was a mystery to some, but a closer look at the other activities in Wallace Wade Stadium on Monday might have held the answer.

The 1989 ACC Championship Blue Devils were being honored at the game, and many representatives from that team were on the field for the ceremony, including the team’s head coach. Who coached Duke to its only football conference title since 1963? Steven Orr Spurrier.

It’s no wonder that the Dabo Swinney-led team couldn’t put it all together with the Head Ball Coach in attendance. Spurrier went 5-2 against Swinney when he was the coach of the South Carolina football program, including 5 in a row from 2009-2013. He also beat Clemson during that 1989 ACC Championship season.

The Labor Day fiasco for Clemson ended with a final score of 28-7 in favor of the Blue Devils.