College Football’s Top 50 Fanbases

5. Clemson

The good

They did it. Clemson achieved what hundreds of programs have failed to do when they leapt from the tier of mediocrity and became a national championship worthy program, sustaining that caliber of play for multiple recruiting cycles.

The bad

There was a lot of pain for the Tigers to reach this point. “Clemsoning” had a not-so-endearing meaning before the team which was South Carolina’s little brother for so long arrived in full force.

The bottom line

It’s hard to say how much of Clemson’s meteoric rise rests on the shoulders of Dabo Swinney. The sport’s heir apparent to Nick Saban himself has turned the Tigers into a national superpower, vindicating fans who held on hope for decades that their time would come.

Howard’s Rock and running down the hill have always been special – the kind of things fans hold onto as cherished memories. But winning, winning is so much sweeter still. And Clemson has done a lot of that recently.