Remember how all the naysayers during ACC expansion said “It’s all about football” and there was grousing about letting in the damn yankees from a school that would never be able to compete; and a Globe writer sarcastically referred to ‘that great rivalry between Clemson and Boston College’?
Clemson just announced that it has three sell-outs of Littlejohn for the upcoming basketball season: Boston College (Jan. 9) North Carolina (Jan. 13) and Duke (Jan. 23)
November 5th, 2009
ACC expansion was and always will have been about money (and thus football) first and basketball a distant second, irregardless of whether or not Clemson sells out games vs. Boston College. 9 ACC schools + 3 Big East schools = ACC Championship game and more $. Simple as that.
November 6th, 2009
Agree with Scott, but that’s still a strong indication that Bball is still alive and well with ALL ACC schools.
I would suspect that the Tiggers sell out most of their post-December break/conference home games. They’re supposed to be pretty good this year, so there’s likely a lot of excitement around the team. The Clemson-BC game is their first home game after break, AND it’s a Saturday, AND it’s the first home ACC game of the season, so all those things combined helped sell it out, I’m sure.
November 16th, 2009
There has been something of a BC-Clemson love fest since expansion which I can’t exactly explain. The Clemson fans love to fly up to Boston, and BC fans say that Clemson people are the warmest in the ACC. I think that might also have helped.
November 16th, 2009
Oh, and according to the press accounts, the only games that were sell outs last year were Duke and UNC.
November 19th, 2009
interesting about the BC-Clemson angle. would be interested to see if there’s any press on that, or something more than anecdotal. perhaps there’s some sort of “outsiders” party going on there – Clemson wasn’t an original ACC member either, IIRC. CU is the only ACC school in SC, and the Tigers aren’t a natural rival with GA Tech, their nearest neighbor. I think all other ACC schools have a big-time rival already in the Conference – new BigEasties Miami and VahTech have FSU and UVA, respectively, so perhaps they were a somewhat (un?)natural match. Also, they’re both wealthy/preppie (by rep), fairly large (ugrad enrollments ~15K) private schools (Miami, Wake and Duke being the other non-staties in the conference), so maybe there is some other esoteric fit there among their fanbases.
as far as the “Clemson people are the warmest in the ACC,” your BC brethren are probably referring to the – ahem – hospitality of the co-ed population down in Greenville. outside of maybe FSU, Clemson ladies are widely considered the hottest in the ACC.
November 24th, 2009
You lost me there. Clemson is not private, and it’s student body is much larger than BC. (BC has about 8k undergrads).
The non-anecdotal example would be the establishment of a trophy for the BC-Clemson rivalry.
And there are too many much older alumni who feel this way to attribute it to “friendly” co-eds.
It’s just an odd development as best I can tell. The BC-Clemson bowl game back in the 1940s in which Clemson upset heavily favored BC was a big deal in the day. Now I wouldn’t say it’a holdover from 50+ years ago, but it just seems the BC fans were welcomed to the ACC when they visited Clemson, and the Clemson fans seem to really get into Boston.
I haven’t yet been to Clemson, but the degree to which the fans are into visiting each others schools has been remarkable.