Clemson’s first non-College Football Playoff experience in seven years will be a new one of sorts.
The Tigers will face Iowa State in the Cheez-It Bowl, it was announced Sunday. The game will be played Dec. 29 at 5:45 p.m. at Camping World Stadium in Orlando.
It will be the first-ever matchup with Iowa State for the Tigers, who were ranked 19th in the final CFP rankings released Sunday after finishing the regular season at 9-3. Clemson finished tied for second in the ACC’s Atlantic Division and did not play in the ACC championship game for the first time since 2014, which is also the last time the Tigers were not a part of the CFP.
That season, Clemson routed Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl, which is the same bowl the Tigers will play in this season even though that’s not what it was called at the time. Initially created as the Blockbuster Bowl in 1990, the Cheez-It Bowl has had several different title sponsors over the years, including the Russell Athletic Bowl and Champs Sports Bowl. Cheez-It signed a multi-year agreement in 2020 to become the game’s latest title sponsor.
Clemson has played in some variation of the bowl three times, going 2-1 in those games.
This year’s game will come a little more than a month after the Tigers made easy work of South Carolina in their regular-season for their fifth straight win. They’ll try for their 11th straight double-digit win season against an Iowa State team that went 7-5 in the regular season, including a 5-4 mark in Big 12 play. The Cyclones have lost three of their last five games but handled TCU in a 48-14 win their last time out.
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