The Orange Bowl offers a recruiting showcase
By Carlos Pineda
SouthernPigskin.com
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Both Clemson and West Virginia have a combined 30 players from the state of Florida including WVU’s training school, and Geno Smith and Stedman Bailey’s, Miramar High School. HOLLYWOOD, Fla — It’s a return trip Dabo Swinney has wanted to make for some time now.
He got his wish.
The Clemson head coach was an assistant on the 1999 Alabama Crimson Tide team that won the SEC Championship and earned a berth to play in the 2000 Orange Bowl game. The Tide lost an overtime-thriller to a future Hall of Fame quarterback and Michigan 35-34.
“I’m excited to be back here. I had the privilege of being an assistant coach at Alabama in ‘99 when we came down and played this little ole Michigan team with some quarterback named Tom Brady,” said Swinney at the Orange Bowl conference at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. “It was a great week, a great experience for me. I haven’t been to a lot of bowls. This was one I always wanted to get back to.”
This time around Swinney is leading a 15th ranked Tigers team (10-3) that won its first ACC championship since 1991 to South Florida. Appropriately, it is Clemson’s first trip to the Orange Bowl since the 1981 team was crowned national champions in Miami — a 22-15 win over Nebraska on Jan. 1, 1982.
“It’s been 30 years since Clemson has been in the Orange Bowl,” Swinney said. “This was the site of our program’s greatest moment. We’ve been wandering in the desert for a long time.
“So to be able to make it back here is something everybody’s really enjoying.”
Although the Tigers started the season 8-0, they lost three of its last four games, almost derailing an astonishing campaign. Many doubted they could beat Virginia Tech a second time in the same season, but Clemson silenced its critics with a 38-10 win and in doing so put an end to the nightmare.
“For us it was just an awesome, awesome night in Charlotte. It was incredible,” Swinney said of winning the ACC Championship Game last Saturday. “To see these guys be able to experience that type of celebration and know they had accomplished their goal, it was very rewarding and a ton of fun to be a part of.”
The Tigers opponent — No. 23 West Virginia — is makings its first Orange Bowl appearance and unlike Clemson, didn’t know its fate until two days after its season ended.
“We didn’t find out until Saturday afternoon. We played Thursday night here in Florida, in Tampa,” West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen said. “Went over to play Coach Holtz and South Florida and we were winning at halftime pretty easily.”
A 13-7 halftime lead disappeared, leaving the Mountaineers (9-3) to come from behind and kick the game-winning field goal on the last play of the game. Only after Cincinnati defeated Connecticut on Saturday could WVU celebrate.
Holgorsen, the first-year head coach not only guided the Mountaineers to a share of the Big East title, but is also taking them to their first BCS bowl game since 2007 — a 48-28 victory over Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.
In addition to the exposure of playing in one of the premiere bowl games, South Florida offers fertile recruiting grounds.
“There’s a lot of advantages to being able to go to the Orange Bowl,” Holgorsen said. “It kind of always comes back to recruiting and being able to have the opportunity to be here and have that kind of exposure for a week.”
Both Clemson and West Virginia have a combined 30 from the state of Florida. Of the 20 players from Florida on the Mountaineers roster, 12 are from the South Florida area, including junior quarterback Geno Smith. Smith, a product of Miramar High, finished the season in the Top 10 in passing yards in the nation, throwing for 3,978 yards, 25 touchdowns and only seven interceptions.
Just how important is Florida when it comes to recruiting?
“Historically, at Clemson, we have had some of our greatest players from [Florida],” Swinney said. “The exposure that you get, the marketing that you get all throughout the state, your brand is promoted. You can’t put a price on that.”
On Jan. 4, these two teams are not only playing to be crowned champions of the Orange bowl but also to leave a solid footprint in the Sunshine State.
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