Note: The following appears in the Louisville gameday football program
Last year, I received a phone call from Allison Dalton, the former executive director of IPTAY who was promotions director in the early 1980s. Allison was coordinating some reunion weekend activities for his class members, and he wanted me to speak on the accomplishments of Clemson athletics during their time in school.
I spoke to them about the accomplishments of all sports, but the football list for those 1956-59 seasons was considerable. I knew that going in because those were the early years of Bob Bradley’s career, which started Oct. 1, 1955, and on our many trips to games together over the years, he told me about those teams.
You can make the argument that the late 1950s is the third-best era in Tiger football history behind our current eight-year run and the 1980s.
Here are some facts about the era in the late 1950s.
• Only seven classes (1960, 1990, 1991, 1992, 2016, 2017, 2018) in Clemson history have finished in the top 20 of at least one of the polls all four years. As you can see, the only class to do it between 1936, when the AP poll started, and 1989 was the class of 1960.
• Clemson and Oklahoma were the only schools that finished in the top 20 of at least one of the national polls all four seasons.
• Clemson had a 31-10-1 record those four years, and the 31 wins tied for fourth with Syracuse for that era.
• The Tigers were ranked in the top 20 in the nation in 29 polls in those four years, eighth most in the nation.
• Clemson won three ACC championships in the four years and had a 19-5-1 record in league play.
• The Tigers were 14-2 at home, but they actually won more games away from home (17-8-2).
• Clemson was 3-1 against South Carolina, and all three wins were by shutout. The Tigers have shut out South Carolina just once since (45-0 in 1989). That era might be the best in Tiger history when it comes to defense, as Clemson had 11 shutouts in four years.