Dabo Swinney reveals Clemson's biggest rival in the ACC

No. 4 Clemson‘s brutal midseason stretch of the schedule continues this week with a road trip to Florida State, and coach Dabo Swinney has faced a number of teams in recent weeks that would love to consider themselves among Clemson’s biggest rivals at this point.

Of course, that won’t change anything for Swinney or the Tigers as they prepare for the Seminoles.

“We’re at a point where everybody circles us,” Swinney said Tuesday, asked who Clemson’s biggest rival is. “I mean we’re that team that everybody’s going to practice against year-round, they’re going to pay attention to every week. You’re going to work in spring ball against that team.

“That’s just where we are as a program. I’m not trying to boast or anything like that, but our success that we’ve had brings that. That comes with it.”

Having already knocked off division foes and ACC Atlantic hopefuls Wake Forest and NC State, Clemson will now turn its attention to Florida State.

As far as conference rivals go, Florida State has to be up there.

Who is Clemson’s biggest ACC rival?

Though there haven’t been many periods in the Clemson-Florida State series where the two programs battle back and forth from year to year, with the matchup instead tending to produce multi-year runs for each side, there has been a pretty even split in the series.

Florida State currently holds the edge 20-14 all time, though Clemson has won the last six.

“Over the last 14 years it’s been a lot of Clemson-Florida State,” Swinney said on the topic of Clemson’s biggest ACC rival. “This game, many times, has kind of decided who won the league or who won the division to go play for the league. I think it’s huge. There’s so many great moments and games and there’s been a lot of cycles in this series, all the way back to 1992.”

Still, even over the last decade only three of the 10 games between the Tigers and Seminoles have been decided by single digits. Clemson, of course, will look to extend that trend this weekend.

Swinney doesn’t seem to care much who the biggest rival is, so long as his team prepares knowing it’s likely to get every opponent’s best shot.

“I just look at everybody with respect and I think everybody’s a rival, but I know it’s different for our fans that grew up with it,” he said. “From a conference standpoint I would say NC State, Florida State, Georgia Tech traditional. Virginia Tech kind of came in late, but just long-time traditional foes, that’s probably your biggest rivals I guess.”

For him?

“Whoever we’re playing that week,” Swinney said.