Here's an interesting, if minor, plot point to the 2017 season: how obnoxious do Clemson fans become? To be fair, every fan base is awful, some in their own peculiar ways. This is true for Ohio State fans too. It's just that we're used to ourselves, have become accustomed to our own stench, and, no matter, we're the protagonists of our own tale.
Enter Clemson, a program on top college football and almost completely unlike Alabama, Florida State, or Ohio State. Alabama and Ohio State have won national championships since forever. Florida State has been a familiar name in the 1980s and finished every season in the 1990s in the top ten. All have "been there before." Clemson really hasn't. This is their first time on top college football since 1981, and only the second ever national championship for the program. Clemson is the clear second program in its own state with football fortunes far from more recent national champions.
This new status for Clemson, along with the fact the national championship came in a win against Alabama, has led Clemson fans to crow in the direction of the SEC's favorite mouthpiece, Paul Finebaum. One caller on Friday pressed Finebaum with the position that Swinney was now "better" than Nick Saban.
Finebaum did not take such an affront to St. Nick lightly.
"How can you put Dabo in the same sentence as Nick Saban,” Finebaum asked a Clemson caller. "Who died and made Dabo Swinney the greatest coach of all-time? He’s got one national championship, ok? I don’t understand this. Since when did Clemson become the it school in the universe? I've never heard a more intoxicated fan base in my life."
"Quit talking like you own college football," Finebaum said.
So, yeah. This debate between Finebaum and what he terms Clemson's "intoxicated" fan base is objectively uninteresting for Ohio State fans or really anyone else. Both could shut up and we'd all be better for it. Tie it into a bigger question about how Clemson fans respond to being king of the mountain and you get something of a more general interest to college football fans in 2017.
