Ben Robinson

All about Ben

By Ben Robinson

Now starts the time I should be used to: recovering from a letdown.

In case you did not see it Saturday night, Clemson University lost to Florida State in football Saturday night. Badly.

On the opening play from scrimmage, Clemson fumbled the ball. Florida State recovered, and a few plays later scored, taking a 7-0 lead.

Oddly, that was pretty much the most positive aspect of the game. The Seminoles pretty much dominated every aspect of the game from the beginning. This morning on talk radio, a host said he believed that had Clemson played its “A” game, the Tigers could have just lost by 20. That’s pretty bad when listing ideal conditions only pills you to 20 points behind.

The fact is it was that bad. I know Florida State has a good team, but they’re not as good as Clemson made them look.

I was hoping the fact that South Carolina lost earlier in the day would make this not sting so much. It didn’t. We still play the Gamecocks the last game of the season, and we get no benefit from them losing. They have won a few in a row over us, so them losing to Tennessee just gives another team the possible claim of being better than Clemson. We should actually be pulling for the Gamecocks to win every game.

But that’s tough to do.

Logically I know that I really had little to do with Clemson losing. I wasn’t on the field, or even in the stadium. I am not on the team, and if I had a connection with the team through dating a cheerleader, I would probably be bragging about dating someone much younger than I am, and better-looking than I could hope to look, regardless of who won the game Saturday night.

But I had such high hopes for this team. I do feel bad for Tajh Boyd. This was his last chance against Florida State, and he did not perform well. I guess this will hurt him with the NFL draft, especially if any general managers have film from the game. The bad part is he seems like an intelligent, pleasant young man. He does not deserve such an albatross hanging from his neck.

Still, I always hope to see my alma mater perform better. I am fortunate that my accomplishments at Clemson did not follow me the way they will these football players. Nobody comes up to me and reminds me about the 37 I scored on an engineering test.

So I will just sit back quietly, pull for my Tigers, and hope the rest of the season turns out better for them.

And hey, basketball season’s coming up. How bad could that be?