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The 1990s were a tumultuous decade for Arkansas football, with joining a new league and having coaching upheaval.
Eventually, Danny Ford was hired and the former Clemson coach who helped the Tigers win the 1981 national championship helped steer the Razorbacks in the right direction, winning a SEC Western Division crown in 1995.
Houston Nutt was brought in at the end of the decade after things bottomed out with Ford, and closed out the century on a high note.
Today we will look at some of the best players from that decade across all positions.
See which coaching and special teams legends made the cut in our all-time Clemson football roster.
A program with a long, rich history, Clemson has seen a lot of great teams with a lot of incredible talent over the years as the program has developed into a marquee name in college football.
As our all-time rosters wind down, the final part is a look at the best of the best special teams players and the coaches that have been a part of Clemson football.
From one of the most exciting special teams players in ACC history in C.J. Spiller to a pair of national championship-winning head coaches, the Tigers have seen incredible success from both the special teams unit and the coaches that helped make the program so special.
Here’s a look at our choices for the special teams starters and the coaches on Clemson football’s all-time roster.
See Clemson’s all-time offense and all-time defense.
Check out our other College Wire all-time lineups: Alabama / Arkansas / Auburn / Colorado / Florida / Georgia / Iowa / LSU / Michigan / Nebraska / North Carolina / Ohio State / Oklahoma / Oregon / Penn State / Rutgers / Tennessee / Texas / Texas A&M / USC / Wisconsin
Dating back to 1954, eight former Clemson players or coaches have received the honor of being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Founded in 1951 by the National Football Foundation, the College Football Hall of Fame is highly selective in its induction process, with less than 1,300 people receiving the honor.
While Clemson will undoubtedly have future inductees because of its success over the past decade, eight members who coached or played at Clemson have already been inducted, one of which earned the honor in 2021.
Clemson has a chance to produce its ninth member in the coming years, as former linebacker Levon Kirkland is on the 2023 ballot. Earning All-American honors three times in college, Kirkland finished with 273 career tackles (40 for loss) and 19 career sacks.
Fans will have to wait until next year to see if Kirkland makes the cut, but here are Clemson’s current eight College Football Hall of Fame members in order by the year they were inducted.
There are ton of things former Clemson tight end K.D. Dunn can remember about the Tigers’ magical run to the 1981 National Championship. But what he remembers the most was “Victory Meal Monday.” “Our training table was something else. It was out of …
There are ton of things former Clemson tight end K.D. Dunn can remember about the Tigers’ magical run to the 1981 National Championship. But what he remembers the most was “Victory Meal Monday.”
“Our training table was something else. It was out of this world,” he said. “On Mondays, was the victory meals. We had it all. We had steak, lobster, champagne … we had it all. And my gosh! I miss that now.”
Clemson had plenty of Victory Meal Mondays in 1981, as the Tigers went on an unprecedented run in Clemson history. They beat No. 4 Georgia, No. 8 North Carolina, and No. 4 Nebraska on their way to winning the school’s first national championship in any sport.
“We were the first,” quarterback Homer Jordan said with a smile.
Clemson has since won two more national championships in football. The 2016 Tigers did it with a 14-1 mark and then in 2018, those Tigers became the first team in the modern era of college football to go 15-0.
But the 1981 team set the standard at Clemson, and it is the standard all Clemson teams have tried to live up to. The 1981 Clemson Tigers will be honored on Saturday when the 19th-ranked Tigers take on Boston College, as a part of Homecoming Weekend in Clemson.
“It was a magical year for us in 1981,” Dunn said. “Nobody thought that Clemson would win the national title, and not a lot of people knew where Clemson was at the time.”
Ninety players from the 1981 team are expected to participate in Tiger Walk on Saturday. They will then be honored at the end of the first quarter on the field at Memorial Stadium.
“We had a good team that year, and it came together for us,” said Jordan, who was an All-ACC First-Team Quarterback in 1981. “We took a lot of pride in playing for our teammates. Coach [Danny] Ford preached about playing for your teammates and playing for your family and go have a good time. So, that is what we did.”
Since 1962, Clemson’s 1981 team is just one of three teams to claim an Associated Press National Championship after opening the season unranked.
In 1980, the Tigers closed the year with four defeats in their last six games. They needed a 27-6 victory over rival South Carolina to salvage a winning season.
However, beating the Gamecocks that year was not just like any other year. USC was 8-2 and ranked No. 14 in the country and was led by eventual Heisman Trophy winner George Rogers.
The win over the Gamecocks was the shot of confidence the Clemson program needed to get back on track. In the off-season, the momentum of the victory carried over, as players used it to drive them in the spring and summer.
And though the South Carolina game gave them confidence, it was the Tigers’ stunning 13-3 victory over defending national champion Georgia that told them they were capable of beating anyone in college football. Jordan threw a touchdown pass to All-American Perry Tuttle and the defense forced a record nine turnovers that sunny afternoon in Death Valley.
“That Georgia game kind of set the tone for us, because the year before it kind of bit us pretty good,” Jordan said. “But that game set the tone for us. We started believing that we could win.”
It especially helped Jordan, who admitted his confidence shot way up after beating his hometown team.
“We started rolling pretty good then,” he said.
Overall, the Tigers finished second nationally in scoring defense in 1981, seventh in rushing defense, seventh in turnover margin and eighth in total defense. Clemson led the ACC in total defense, rushing defense, scoring defense and interceptions. It forced a school record 41 turnovers, which still stands as the high mark in school history.
Clemson allowed just three teams to score more than 10 points in 1981—Wake Forest, South Carolina and Nebraska—and it went 18 quarters without giving up a touchdown during one stretch.
“We didn’t want people to score on us, and we wanted to physically dominate people,” All-American linebacker Jeff Davis said. “In a sick way, that was our joy. Yeah, we may not have beaten everybody by 21 points, but your body and your mental state of mind said we beat you by 21 points. That’s the kind of football we played. We had no reason for how great we were playing.”
After the Tigers’ win over Georgia, they crushed Kentucky (21-3), Virginia (27-0), Duke (38-10), NC State (17-7) and Wake Forest (82-24). Clemson climbed to No. 2 in the AP Poll, setting up the ACC’s first ever top 10 showdown between two conference foes as the Tigers traveled to Chapel Hill to take on No. 8 North Carolina.
“That was pretty tough game. Two good programs going head-to-head,” Dunn said. “They had great athletes over there, along with ours. It tells you the testament of good players going at it because it came down to the end.”
It ended with Jeff Bryant falling on a backwards pass to seal the Tigers’ 10-8 victory.
Clemson closed out its first perfect regular season since 1948 by beating Maryland (21-7) and South Carolina (29-13). After the South Carolina game, they accept a bid to play No. 4 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
The Tigers moved into the No. 1 spot for the first time in the program’s history a week after they concluded the regular season. Penn State beat Dan Marino and previously undefeated and No. 1 Pittsburgh, propelling Clemson to No. 1 in the rankings as it headed to play Nebraska in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.
At the time, the 1982 Orange Bowl was Clemson’s first Orange Bowl appearance in 25 years. Jordan, the game’s Most Valuable Offensive Player, completed 11-of-22 passes and had 180 yards of total offense in leading the Tigers, while Davis, the Defensive MVP of the game, had 14 tackles in the 22-15 victory.
“We earned that thing,” Davis said. “Not in a sense that we beat everybody or were more talented. We earned that thing on the practice field. That’s where we won our national championship. We didn’t win the national championship in the Orange Bowl in Miami. We won that thing on those practice fields. Coach Ford worked us. If I could say anything that could define us, I would say that was it. We knew how to work. When you know how to work, there is no give up and there is no satisfaction when you know how to work.”
These days, when the 1981 team gets together, they do not talk much about the games or their perfect 12-0 season. They instead just enjoy each other’s company, as they laugh and joke around. They know what they accomplished 40 years ago was special. That is all they need, and maybe another victory meal on Monday.
Football season has finally arrived. Time to represent your Tigers and show your stripes!
It is finally here. It is game week! This Saturday the 2021 football season will begin for third-ranked Clemson, as the Tigers play No. 5 Georgia in the Duke’s Mayo Kickoff Classic at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. Clemson vs. Georgia, what a …
It is finally here. It is game week!
This Saturday the 2021 football season will begin for third-ranked Clemson, as the Tigers play No. 5 Georgia in the Duke’s Mayo Kickoff Classic at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
Clemson vs. Georgia, what a way to kick off the football season, right?
Like a lot of you, I have a lot of great memories of this rivalry from my childhood. These two played some of the best games in college football back when they played every year.
“The Georgia game always seemed to make or break our season,” said former Clemson head coach Danny Ford, who was 4-4-1 against Georgia in his 11 seasons at Clemson. “I don’t know why that was the case, but for the most part that was the case.”
From 1977-’87 no rivalry in the country was more intense or competitive than the Clemson-Georgia Series. In those 11 years, the two teams battled to a 5-5-1 record, which started with a one-point Clemson victory in 1977 in Athens and ended with a one-point Clemson victory in 1987 in Clemson.
But the rivalry was not the best because the record broke even. No, the reason was due to how highly contested each game was and what it meant for the victors. In 1980, Georgia survived Clemson, 20-16, in Athens and went on to win the National Championship.
In 1981, Clemson used nine Bulldog turnovers to knock off No. 4 Georgia, 13-3, in Death Valley on its way to a National Championship.
The average margin of victory in the series during that 11-year stretch was 4.7 points per game. Nine of the 11 games were decided by a touchdown or less. The only two that were not were the 1978 and the 1981 games.
Clemson had a 3-1-1 record in Death Valley vs. the Bulldogs during that stretch, while Georgia owned a 4-2 mark in Athens. The Bulldogs scored 171 points (15.5 points per game), while Clemson scored 159 points (14.5 points per game).
“If we beat Georgia, we generally went on to have a pretty special year, but if we lost to them, it seemed as if it lingered longer than we would have liked and it would beat us more than once,” Ford said.
That was the case in 1984 when Georgia’s Kevin Butler kicked a then NCAA record 60-yard field goal with 11 seconds left to beat second-ranked Clemson, 26-23. The Tigers ran the ensuing kickoff back into Georgia territory and the Bulldogs were flagged for a personal foul after the tackle. But after a long debate, officials ruled the foul occurred after time had run out and the game was ruled over.
Clemson kicker Donald Igwebuike, who led the nation in field goal percentage that year (17-18), was denied the opportunity to kick a 42-yard field goal. The Tigers lost their next game at Georgia Tech a week later, ending a 20-game ACC winning streak. Clemson went on to finish the season 7-4.
In 1986, David Treadwell beat the Bulldogs with a 46-yard field goal as time expired, 31-28. In 1987, he kicked a 21-yard field goal with two seconds left to beat Georgia, 21-20. Those two games marked the first and last time Clemson beat the Bulldogs in consecutive years since winning seven consecutive years from 1900-’06.
The Tigers went on to win the ACC Championship in each of those seasons, while posting an 8-2-2 record in 1986 and a 10-2 mark in 1987.
“Our kids always looked forward to playing Georgia because Georgia represented the best in the SEC at the time,” Ford said. “They were the standard to live up to and our kids knew if they could beat them, then they could play and beat anyone in the country.”
The Bulldogs may not be the standard in the SEC anymore, but they are the No. 5 team in the country, and win this Saturday for the 2021 Tigers will mean as much as a any of those five wins from 1977-’87.
Also, this is the first time in the history of this rivalry that both teams come in ranked in the top 5.
“It’s what you dream about as a kid, and as a coach, you love these moments,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said recently to the ACC Network. “So, we’re excited about it. And this is two teams that have big-time aspirations, and who knows, could play again down the road somewhere.”
Boy, wouldn’t that be fun?
Football season has finally arrived. Time to represent your Tigers and show your stripes!
