The Clemson Tigers can take another step towards bowl eligibility with a win over Louisville Friday night, officially ending Louisville's ACC Championship hopes.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Clemson enters a high-stakes November game with a new identity: spoiler.
The script is flipped. The Tigers (4-5, 3-4 ACC), long the dominant power of the Atlantic Coast Conference, are unranked and mathematically eliminated from College Football Playoff contention. Their preseason designation as the ACC favorite is a distant memory, replaced by the unfamiliar fight to simply reach a bowl game.