This week, ESPN took a look back at the past, as we enter a new era in college football with a vastly altered conference landscape amid all the realignment.
The power conferences will look a lot different this season, with no shortage of teams having changed leagues – including Cal, SMU and Stanford, all of which are joining the ACC.
As we get ready for the upcoming season that will be defined in part by the radical conference realignment, ESPN’s Bill Connelly highlighted classic matchups and bowl games between new conference rivals, ranking the top 50 games in college football history featuring teams that will be new (or old) conference foes in 2024.
Checking in at No. 44 on Connelly’s list is the 1986 Gator Bowl that pitted Clemson and Stanford — a wild affair, and the lone meeting between the two programs to date.
Clemson emerged victorious in that matchup when Danny Ford’s Tigers ran out to a 27-0 halftime lead and held on for a 27-21 win against Jack Elway’s 20th-ranked Stanford squad.
“The only meeting between these two schools nearly featured a 27-point comeback,” Connelly wrote. “With 291 first-half yards in front of a mostly partisan crowd of 80,104, Clemson bolted to a 27-0 halftime lead, but Stanford charged back with three touchdowns from star running back Brad Muster and got a late chance to take the lead. Alas, the Cardinal turned the ball over on downs, and the Tigers survived.”
Clemson and Stanford will meet as ACC counterparts for the first time on Saturday, Sept. 28, when the Cardinal make their Death Valley debut.
Of the ACC’s newest trio of programs, Stanford is the only new addition slated to face Clemson in 2024.
Stanford will become only the second team from California ever to play in Death Valley, joining Pro Football Hall of Famer George Allen’s Long Beach State squad that lost to Clemson 59-0 in the 1990 season opener.
