The last practice before they went to Tampa, Florida to play Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game, the Clemson Tigers practiced on Frank Howard Field at Clemson Memorial Stadium.

After he huddled the team together following practice and gave them one final speech, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney pointed to the 1981 National Championship sign located on the stadium’s ring of honor on the south stands.

“I told them, ‘Boys, that 1981 team has been awfully lonely up there on that stadium for a long time, and this is the team that is going to join them,’” Swinney said during Clemson’s Championship Celebration on Saturday at Memorial Stadium. “The next thing I told them was next Saturday we are going to have a parade to celebrate and Death Valley is going to be packed to the house to celebrate the 2016 National Champions.”

And it was, as nearly 70,000 fans dressed in orange came to Death Valley to celebrate Clemson’s first national championship in football since the 1981 team did the same thing 35 years ago. The Tigers beat Alabama, 35-31, last Monday in the championship game at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium.

“Last year, when the season was over, there were a lot of books written, lots of documentaries, lots of DVDs, and I told the team that all year long that all those people can do is just document and report what happened,” Swinney said. “‘What you have to understand is that we have the pin in our hands and we write the story. We write the ending.

“And what an ending they wrote Monday night in Tampa, Florida. What an ending!”

The ending was a two-yard Deshaun Watson to Hunter Renfrow touchdown pass with one second to play in the game as the Tigers rallied from 14 points down and later by 10 points down in the third and fourth quarter to earn the win over the Crimson Tide.

It was a great feeling for Swinney and his team. Eight years earlier, led by All-American running back C.J. Spiller, the Tigers walked off that same field at Raymond James Stadium disappointed after losing to Georgia Tech in the 2009 ACC Championship Game.

“I’ll never forget walking off that field. Oranges being thrown at us, and then they sent us to the Music City Bowl to play in twenty degree weather, and we won,” Swinney said. “But God had something bigger for us. For that team, we needed to win the division, but here we were eight years later walking off that same field as national champions. That’s special.”

—Photo Credit: Dawson Powers-USA TODAY Sports

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