Kevin Clark, who hosts This Is Football on ESPN, was joined by \u201cStanford Steve\u201d Coughlin to give some takes that they want to own this football season.<\/p>\n
So, what is the No. 1 college football take that Coughlin wants to own for the 2025 campaign?<\/p>\n
That take is \u2013 Coughlin believes Clemson will be on track for an undefeated season if Dabo Swinney\u2019s team beats LSU in the Aug. 30 season opener (7:30 p.m., ABC).<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Clemson wins Week 1, they\u2019re going undefeated,\u201d Coughlin said.<\/p>\n
Explaining that take, Coughlin cited the return of star quarterback Cade Klubnik and the wealth of weapons he has at wide receiver \u2013 similar to the type of talent Clemson had at quarterback and receiver in past glory years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at just how different one year is in this sport, where last year when you looked at, say, I don\u2019t know, the top 12 teams in the preseason, and every quarterback was from somewhere else,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cAnd now when you look at that, this ranking\u2019s going to come out \u2013 there\u2019s some people\u2019s \u201ctoo-early whatever\u201d \u2014 these quarterbacks have been at the school for over a year at least, or got recruited there. Example 1A, and maybe 1B, are Austin, Texas with Arch [Manning], and Cade Klubnik, who lost to Texas last year, and Clemson. And when I watch Clemson, everybody wants to point to how Dabo didn\u2019t [use] the portal\u2026 Internet having their way of how people should be doing things that have had success and won national championships, and he\u2019s one of a handful of guys that has won a title that is still coaching in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, and more importantly, when I look at Clemson, guys aren\u2019t leaving to go other places. Now, what was Clemson when they were at the top of the world? It was Wide Receiver U, man. You go back and look at all the guys, going back to Nuk [Hopkins] all the way with Tajh Boyd, winning a national championship with Deshaun [Watson], with Mike [Williams], and it\u2019s embedded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coughlin also mentioned how competitive Clemson was against Texas in the first round of the College Football Playoff last season, noting that the 12th-seeded Tigers were on the cusp of an upset win over the fifth-seeded Longhorns in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n
But because Clemson ultimately lost, 38-24, Coughlin pointed out that the Tigers have plenty of motivation heading into the 2025 season after falling short a year ago.<\/p>\n
Coughlin says Clemson has \u201cexactly what I want in a team that I think is going to be successful in this ever-changing world of college football.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get a stop late in that game [at Texas], it\u2019s a one-score game and they have the ball in Austin, Texas,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cAnd I love what they bring defensively\u2026 They took the long road to get there. They recruited them and developed them\u2026 I love what Clemson has, and I still think the ACC is not where the league would like it to be. I think the league, in some instances, think they have like five teams that are worthy of making the playoff \u2014 they don\u2019t\u2026 I look at Clemson as the cream of the crop of the conference, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I look at what they have instilled, I look at the guys that are coming back and felt the failure in the biggest spot. They were sky-high, upsetting SMU to get in the playoff, and then a couple weeks later, they\u2019re going home and it\u2019s winter conditioning, which is the most depressing thing in the world when your season is over and you have to think about winter conditioning as a player. So, I love that they went through it and succeeded \u2014 and failed, and didn\u2019t get to their goal\u2026 They have exactly what I want in a team that I think is going to be successful in this ever-changing world of college football.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Clark, who hosts This Is Football on ESPN, was joined by \u201cStanford Steve\u201d Coughlin to give some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[5320,7,5324,5322,5321,5323,5325],"class_list":{"0":"post-151337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-clemson-insider-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-hero","12":"tag-noonan","13":"tag-track-and-field","14":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114730378656139830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}