Imagine 9-game SEC schedule discourse, plus VT hosted ‘Enter Sandman’

As we all learned in high school physics or chemistry, you can’t conduct a proper experiment unless you establish a control group. Do the weird stuff to Group A, but leave Group B alone, and then see how different the two groups look afterward.

In 2020s college football, Clemson decided a while back to make itself the control group. For a couple years there, Dabo Swinney’s unwillingness to engage with the transfer portal made him look out of touch, hopelessly stubborn and doomed to irrelevance in the modern game.

But then you look up and realize his Tigers have still averaged 10 wins a year throughout the NIL-and-portal era, most recently winning his ninth ACC title in 16 full seasons. Overall, they’ve slumped a bit, often at quarterback — but they now field Cade Klubnik, the senior QB who ranks as a top-tier Heisman favorite, and the nation’s No. 1 roster in Bill Connelly’s returning-production stat.

That latter fact came to mind again while reading Seth Emerson’s new interview with Swinney and company:

“Players say the portal strategy, or lack thereof, resonates in the locker room. In a recent interview on Ryan Clark’s podcast, Clemson players TJ Parker and Peter Woods said it makes players want to work harder for the program.

“Klubnik echoed that in an interview with The Athletic: Players feel they have a long runway to prove themselves.

“‘Because everybody knows you’ve got to do something stupid to get kicked out of here,’ Klubnik said. ‘That’s not the case everywhere, if you have three bad practices you might get booted somewhere else. But coach Swinney believes in the guys he recruited.’”

When Clemson’s quirky series of personally selected stars align, like they might be right now, it does seem like there’s a lot of potential value in remaining relatively old school. Swinney’s even taken up bringing in a transfer or three.

There’s also a lot more in Seth’s story, including the former doomsayer Dabo calling this the “best time in the history of college football.” 🤔

Take My Hand: ‘Enter Sandman’ finally went home

Nearly 25 years ago, Virginia Tech first entered Lane Stadium to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” a hype song chosen to show off the new video board. (The other contenders that day: “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses and the 1990s Chicago Bulls theme by the Alan Parsons Project.)

“Enter Sandman” stuck around.

• Within a few years, the thunderous walkup and crowd response established Lane Stadium as one of those places that gets universally referred to as A Hostile Environment. By 2011, when the song fired back up during the final seconds against Miami (and the crowd went apes—), it was one of the most nationally recognizable things about the Hokies.
• Over the years, the band became fully aware of the phenomenon. In an interview from a while back, singer James Hetfield expressed adoration for Blacksburg latching on so fiercely to the decades-old song that their singalongs have frequently set off seismographs.

Last night, Metallica’s tour swung through Lane Stadium for the first time ever. There are tons of videos of the song that was the obvious highlight of their set, but I like this one taken from the crowd. Hokies fans did work on the Richter scale again, of course.