By mid-season in 1989, Clemson’s opportunity to win a fourth consecutive ACC Championship had slid through the cracks. Losses to upstarts Duke and Georgia Tech, knocked the Tigers out of the running for a championship.
At 5-2, the players called a meeting with head coach Danny Ford and expressed their concerns and asked the coaches if they could just go back to playing football and having fun. So, that is what they did.
The Tigers went on to win the final four games of the regular season by outscoring NC State, Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Duke by a combined margin of 154-23.