Hey everybody, we hope you had happy holidays, here’s to a victorious New Year. The first item for your perusal is a very telling, very controversial piece from the New York Times. Heralded recruit Jamarkus McFarland allowed the NY Times to follow along during his recruiting process, which involved Southern Cal, LSU, Texas, and Oklahoma. Of course we wouldn’t be writing about this if it didn’t include some juicy details into the sordid world of big time recruiting. In a very Smoove B style of storytelling, Jamarkus (or J-Mac as his mom calls him) has this to say about a Texas recruiting visit:

“I will never forget the excitement amongst all participants,” McFarland wrote. “Alcohol was all you can drink, money was not an option. Girls were acting wild by taking off their tops, and pulling down their pants. Girls were also romancing each other. Some guys loved every minute of the freakiness some girls demonstrated. I have never attended a party of this magnitude.”

Oh how very sordid indeed. The Texas board over at Rivals has already scrambled to post a complete rebuttal, but it’s kind of hard to really refute that there’s some insanely iffy shit that happens in the recruiting process. Read the NY Times article here. What a snitch.

GATOR BOWL NEWS

Greg Wallace reports on how the Tigers hope to slow Nebraska’s efficient offensive machine. It should be an interesting matchup, as Nebraska’s offense is ranked 12th nationally to Clemson’s 17th ranked defense. I’m not sure what immediate effect losing Koenning will have on the defensive scheme, but I doubt the Tigers will deviate too much from that plan given just 15 practices before the bowl.

Coach Swinney isn’t letting his team lollygag (LOLLYGAGGERS!) at practice. DABO HATES JOGGING. DABO LOVES RUNNING. WHY DO YOU JOG AND ANGER THE DABO?

CLEMSON BASEBALL JUST SHY OF TOP 25

College baseball’s Top 25 Preseason poll came out today and we were nearly included in it, ranked at 26th overall.  We’ve got 8 out of 9 starters and 4 out of 5 pitchers all returning including Top Player watch list candidates Kyle Parker and Ben Paulsen.  Rawrsome. Also, season ticket info for 2009 is imminent.

MORE MORE MORE

More articles about Clemson’s offensive line woes.  More articles about how historically awesome everything from Nebraska is.  More articles about how awesome Nebraska is now.  More articles about what Tommy Bowd-ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz…… This bowl game couldn’t take any longer to get here.

CHAVIS TO LSU

As per ESPN, John Chavis has agreed in principal to an offer from Les Miles to be the new LSU defenseive coordinator after the bowl game for a cool half a mil.  Horse shit, John Chavis.  Horse shit. (HT: CUVinny)

TIGERS TAKE INTEREST IN SHRINE BOWL MVP

Spencer Shuey, all around beast and death-bringer standing at 6′4″ 240, was named the shrine bowl defensive MVP for North Carolina. The Rivals two star prospect recorded 8 tackles with two for a loss in the game. When asked after the game about what colleges he said he wanted to go to, he hoped that Clemson would look into him. He might only be a two star, but the guy is a monster. Rivals also reports that Billy Napier called him* and set up an official visit after the game.

*Requires subscription

JK JAY HURT IN THE SHRINE BOWL

JK Jay, lineman for the single A Christ Church in Greenville and Clemson commit, got hurt in the Shrine bowl. If you remember last year, he was hurt and ended his junior year prematurely on the sidelines. Hopefully Joey Batson can get him working out in a way to help this out when he gets to Clemson.

BASKETBALL

K.C. Rivers was named ACC Player of the Week for his outstanding performance against North Florida and Miami. He had 28 points and a great defensive game that stood out in help the Tigers route the Hurricanes. The win over Miami also helped Clemson jump to 20th in the pools according to ESPN.

ESPN’S TAKE ON A NOT-SO-NEW PRACTICE

ESPN’s Kyle Whelliston looks into the time honored practice of paying small schools to provide larger teams with an easy home victory on the schedule. The figures range in the high tens of thousands in basketball, but it’s common place for teams to get a couple hundred thousand in football. While he doesn’t come out and bash Clemson, he sure does use our stomping of North Florida as a prime example with lots of pictures to boot. He makes heavy light of the fact that the practice is extremely frowned upon in some sports like boxing, which carries a federal prison sentence. He also tries to paint the UNF game as closer than it seemed when we more than doubled their score, 76-36. Whelliston leaves out the fact that the smaller programs really struggle with money because they don’t have big booster organizations like IPTAY to help them out, so these games make a up for huge amounts of slack and pay for these kids to go to school in a way. The news room must be awful slow in terms of college basketball in the offices up at Bristol.

CLEMSON, MEET MILTON JENNINGS

That five star recruit that Purnell just landed? His name is Milton Jennings and he goes to Summerville’s Pinewood Prep. See some highlights from a Chik-Fil-A classic his team is playing in and get his take on why he wanted to come to Clemson in this video.

BASKETBALL KEEPS CRUISING ON THE COMPETITION

Miami jumped out to a 12 point lead last night but made a few key mistakes and that’s all it too for our basketball squad to cock slap the Hurricanes across the face by a score of 91-72.  KC Rivers had 28 points and Terrence Oglesby added another 17 in the points party.  Miami coach Frank Haith commented afterwards that, “Obviously, that was a butt-whuppin. Those guys gave it to us. They were tougher than we were.”

BOWL PRACTICE NO WALK IN THE PARK

Coach Swinney seems to have our guys turned geared up during practice.  Check out this video on it.  From reports that we’ve been getting all over, the practices seem fast paced, extremely physical, and high in spirit.

“KNOW YOUR…” IS UP AT BIG RED

Big Red network finally got around to posting our end of last week’s “Know Your…” segment.  We won’t be doing a second segment due to time constraints and not wanting to force questions.  Instead, expect a comprehensive “Know Your Jacksonville” segment.

FRESHMAN ALL-HUMMERRICANS (SP?)

Mason Cloy and Brandon Maye have made the rounds on a few Freshman All-American lists.  DaQuan Bowers picked up some honorable mention rep as well. I guess we have Tommy Bowden and his recruiting staff to thank… so… Thanks Dabo.

DAVIS CLOSING IN

James Davis is thinking about the team first and winning before all his personal stuff.  It can be echoed at this point that James Davis is one of the best representatives Clemson football has had in quite a while.  He needs 112 yards of rushing to beat Raymond Priester’s all time rushing record at Clemson.  He needs just two touchdowns to surpass Travis Zacharcy on the all time touchdowns list.

A look at the numbers by year (as per his ESPN page):

• Freshman Year: 879 yards rushing, 9 TDs.  19 receptions for 152 yards.
• Sophomore Year: 1187 yards rushing, 17 TDs. 6 receptions for 115 yards.
• Junior Year: 1064 yards rushing, 10 TDs. 12 receptions for 51 yards, 2 TDs.
• Senior Year: 725 yards rushing, 11 TDs. 14 receptions for 123 yards.
• Total: 3,855 yards rushing, 47 TDs.   51 receptions for 441 yards, 2 TDs.

FOOTBALLIN’

The Post & Courier has some practice notes for you to chew on. Seems that the defense is a little smoother than the offense right now. Kyle Parker also seems to be making a lot of progress and should serve as a great backup to WILLY KORN once he’s scored a dozen or so touchdowns in the first half and feels like letting someone else have a shot.

Clemson has chewed up its 13,500 ticket allotment for the Gator Bowl and has procured 1,000 more to distribute. This article states that 62,000 of 67,000 seats have been sold, which is odd, since an article we linked to (lanked?) last week claimed 70,000 out of 77,000 tickets have been sold. SOMEONE STOLE PART OF THE GATOR BOWL.

Gene Sapakoff from the P&C backs up, surveys things, and let’s us know that it’s okay to like Tommy Bowden. He makes some great points here, and as we’ve said before, Tommy left the program better than he found it.

The Spartanburg Herald has a piece on Tyler Shatley, a Clemson commit and back for the NC Shrine Bowl team. The article mentions his penchant for smash-mouth football and he gives some thoughts on Clemson’s running game.

BASKETBALL UPDATE

AParker points out the best part of this article about the Tigers’ 11-0 start in basketball:

The biggest cheer, though, came only moments from the end when 7-2 freshman Catalin Baciu’s basket earned free tacos for the fans from a local fast-food chain.

More on basketball from the ACC Sports Journal, who really should kick us a membership with all the links we’re sending their way HINT HINT WINK NUDGE. While Clemson has gotten off to fast starts in the past against creampuffs, the Journal looks at this season’s matchups and proves that Clemson has passed some tough tests this season already. They also explain that depth may be an issue, with only a couple of the freshmen being up to the task of facing the rigors of an ACC basketball season.

ADDITIONAL NOTE

Congratulations to former Tiger and future hall of famer Brian Dawkins, who made yet another Pro Bowl. The ACC Sports Journal tells us that the ACC is representing STRONG in the Pro Bowl, claiming 23.8% of the roster spots. The SEC is represented with 15.5% and the Big XII has 9.5%. That’s gotta count for something, right?

RECRUITIN’

Clemson hosted a big haul of top prospects this weekend and emerged on Monday with one commit and a number of guys who now have Clemson in their final three or so choices.

4-star safety Jonathan Meeks out of Hargrave Military in VA committed to Clemson on Sunday and brings Clemson’s total number of commits for 2009 to 9. He will graduate this week and enroll in Clemson in January. 4-star DE Leon Mackey, another Hargrave product and January enrollee candidate, did not commit to Clemson but will make a decision between the Tigers, Arkansas, and Virginia Tech before January.

WR Bryce McNeal out of Minnesota reportedly now has Clemson in his final three and will decide at the Army All-American game. It is important to note that this is a guy who had shown some interest in Clemson, but really was highly swayed by what he saw once he set foot on campus.

PRACTICIN’

The Post & Courier has an update on how the Tigers are preparing for their bowl game. Interesting notes from this piece include the fact that Clemson is willing to pay the next defensive coordinator up to $415,000 a year for three years.

Gene Sapakoff tells us that WILLY KORN’s shoulder is getting stronger, healthier, hungrier. Also, LB Stanley Hunter sprained his knee but should be good to go by bowl time. Sapakoff tells us, in another article, about the bowl swag players are receiving this year, including a disturbingly high number of bowls giving away Crocs.

UNRANKED #25

Clemson basketball reached 10 wins before any other team in the nation. They have still not lost a game. They are still unranked. ***UPDATE*** The coaches’ poll was just released and Clemson is #25. They are, however, hovering between the number one and number two spot in the Real Time RPI rankings. The Tigers are coming off a 90-63 drubbing of SC State.

OLD SCHOOL

Sports Illustrated’s Vault presents us with a nice little article on Clemson and Frank Howard. Try to tolerate the annoying “aw shucks” style the author chooses to go with here, try not to cringe when he says to pronounce Clemson as “Clem-zin,” and try not to be jealous when you hear about Danny Ford’s awesome 172 peice hat collection. I wonder how many he has now.

***UPDATE***

Just heard that kicker Richard Jackson will be academically ineligible for the bowl game. Not a huge loss. A guy who came in as a heralded kicker, suffered from injuries, and according to one reader has been too busy playing frat boy to study or dedicate himself too much to football. Let’s hope he gets his academics in order, then works towards earning that scholarship.