When Clemson won 10 games and its first ACC Championship under head coach Dabo Swinney back in 2011, he said it was a good accomplishment, but “we have to go do it again.”
For the Clemson program to be taken seriously, it had to start proving it could win at a high level on a consistent basis. From 1992-2010, Clemson had some good football teams, but it could not maintain any kind of success. They traded a 9-win season with back-to-back 7-win seasons and the rut went on and on for nearly two decades.
In 2011, Clemson was 7-0 in Death Valley, the first undefeated home record in quite a while at the time.