We all have baggage. It’s the cost we pay for choices made, experiences endured, a life lived. For some, it might be the girl who got away. Maybe it’s the job they didn’t get. Or perhaps it’s the time you pretended to pee like a dog in the end zone during an Egg Bowl. The point is, to live life to its fullest is to understand that regret is part of the package.
The good news, however, is there is always a chance to do better, to set down that baggage and find something approaching redemption. That’s what Saturday was supposed to be about for Ryan Day, Mario Cristobal, and Dabo Swinney. Week 14 was going to be a redemption story. Instead, the college football gods delivered misery. Well, unless you’re a Michigan fan. Then it was all comedy.
A quick accounting of where things began Saturday. It had been 1,442 days since Clemson made a College Football Playoff, but with a win against South Carolina, the Tigers would’ve been poised to squeeze into the first 12-team postseason and erase years of doubts about Swinney’s ability to win in the modern era of college football. It had been 1,828 days since Ohio State beat Michigan, but on Saturday, the odds were stacked so heavily in the Buckeyes’ favor, any other result was unfathomable. This was an Ohio State roster as talented as any in program history and a Michigan team put together with duct tape and glue sticks. It had been 7,672 days since Miami won a conference championship. But the Hurricanes spent this season as the class of the ACC, finally living up to the immense expectations that have followed the program since its glory years, even if Miami has spent the past 20 years as college football’s version of U2 — still releasing new work, but effectively just a nostalgia act. It’s tough to say how many days it had been since Cristobal properly handled a late-game scenario since you can’t divide by zero.
Week 14 didn’t promise to erase every blemish, forgive every sin or rewrite history for anyone, but it offered a bridge to somewhere better, some new timeline in which Day isn’t defined by a single game each year against his rival, Swinney isn’t lamented as an old man yelling at clouds, and someone under the age of 40 can remember a time in which Miami mattered. And on Saturday, Ohio State, Clemson, and Miami saw those bridges and opted to light a flamethrower.
It’s hard to say exactly where things went wrong for Day and the Buckeyes in an excruciating 13-10 loss to Michigan. The slow starts have been a signature of 2024, the result of a team that knows it’s good enough to flip a switch or, perhaps, a result of so many noon kickoffs that even Gus Johnson’s voice started to go awry. It’s certainly not on Day that Will Howard threw two brutal interceptions, that Jayden Fielding missed two short kicks, or that Sherrone Moore opened his desk drawer Saturday morning to find a manila envelope marked, “For Your Eyes Only, Love and Kisses, C. Stalions.” But Day knew the stakes before the season began, and Ohio State spent enough money on this roster to finish third in the American League East, and Michigan was missing two potential first-round NFL draft picks, and it still didn’t matter. The Wolverines managed just 62 yards passing, threw two interceptions, had three different drives inside the Ohio State 5 that didn’t end in touchdowns and still won. There are no logical explanations for this, so it’s fair then to move to the next closest thing: Day is a Michigan sleeper cell installed as head coach in Columbus just to infuriate the Ohio State faithful in some sort of elaborate “Manchurian Candidate” scenario.
Regardless, the game ended with a loss, with a brawl, with police intervening and pepper-spraying players, but no amount of mace could burn away the images of the Wolverines celebrating on Ohio State’s field in what may well be the most devastating loss in the rivalry’s history.
At Clemson, there’s similar frustration with a coach who has won enough to have a long leash, but has also climbed far enough out on a limb to endure the slings and arrows of fans and pundits and the occasional radio caller with some valid points but limited self-awareness. Clemson has had so many chances in 2024. After being blown out in the opener against Georgia, the tide turned back in the Tigers’ favor amid a six-game winning streak. After a home loss to Louisville, the Tigers clawed their way back up the rankings, thanks in large part to attrition ahead of them, and found themselves as the first team out entering Saturday’s game, with a chance for a signature win — it would’ve been Clemson’s only decent win this year — against red-hot South Carolina. The playoff was within sight, but only if you could see past the imposing figure of LaNorris Sellers. Clemson led by four with less than two minutes to play, but the Tigers’ defense never had an answer for Sellers. He threw for 164 yards, ran for 166, and scored twice, including a 20-yard run on a third-and-16 with just 1:08 to play to give the Gamecocks a 17-14 lead. The Tigers had their shot to win — or at least send the game to overtime — but Cade Klubnik’s checkdown throw with 16 seconds left nicked off Phil Mafah’s hands and was picked off by Demetrius Knight Jr.
This marks the second time in three years Clemson had a realistic shot at the playoff, only to lose late to rival South Carolina. Afterward, Shane Beamer gushed over the play of his quarterback and the resurgence of his team, which was 3-3 in mid-October but is now arguably the hottest team in the country. Beamer insisted South Carolina was a playoff team, and it may well be, but the decision by the committee won’t be easy. South Carolina entered the week ranked behind Alabama and Ole Miss, both of whom won in Week 14 to move to 9-3, and both of whom have head-to-head wins over the Gamecocks.
Perhaps ironically, it’s Clemson that remains in control of its own playoff destiny after Saturday’s disaster, and the Tigers can thank Cristobal for that.
All Miami had to do Saturday was knock off Syracuse, and it could punch its ticket — to the ACC title game and to the College Football Playoff. The Hurricanes even jumped out to a 21-0 lead, which should’ve been an insurmountable margin with Cam Ward on their side. And yet, this is Miami — a program that flirts with disaster like it has had a half-dozen shots of Fireball and defeat is waiting tables at the Waffle House. Syracuse turned its 21-0 deficit into a 35-28 lead entering the fourth quarter before Miami fought back to tie the game. But the Canes’ defense has been a red flag all year, and on Saturday, it had no answers for Kyle McCord, who threw for 380 yards and three touchdowns (and didn’t lose to Michigan). McCord engineered a nine-play touchdown drive to put Syracuse up 42-35, but that still afforded Ward and the Canes more than nine minutes to match. All of that should’ve just been prelude to another Miami win, because Ward was once again exceptional. And yet, this is Miami, where playoff hopes spend too much time on South Beach and wake up looking like the Pop Tarts Bowl. Ward engineered a 13-play drive, setting up Miami with a first-and-goal at the Syracuse 8, but then things went haywire. An unsportsmanlike penalty pushed the Canes back, and a Ward completion and scramble set up a fourth-and-goal at the 15. That left Cristobal with a decision: Put the game in the hands of the best quarterback to ever wear a Miami uniform or, with 3:42 remaining, kick a field goal and leave it up to your defense that has served as a maître d’ for Syracuse receivers the entire game. Cristobal chose pain. The rest was entirely predictable. Syracuse picked up three first downs and ran out the clock to move to 9-3, a playoff team in its own right had it not imploded against a woeful Stanford team back in September. Miami ceded its spot in the ACC championship to Clemson, may have lost its spot in the College Football Playoff, and reminded the world that, even when U2 gives you its new album for free, it’s best to just go ahead and delete it and move on with your life.
And so, Week 14 ended without redemption for those most in need of a second act. It ended with Clemson flubbing its best hopes, then being handed another just because the football gods enjoy seeing Swinney’s optimism squashed. It ended with Miami closer to its past than it had been in decades, yet still so far from those glory years that the world rolls its eyes every time the conversation comes up again. And it ended with Ohio State fighting Michigan, handing its conference title shot to Penn State and catching strays from Texas. The college football gods can be cruel, and while redemption is always within our reach, days like Saturday also remind us that our reach often exceeds our grasp, and redemption slips through our fingers for a backbreaking interception far more easily than we care to imagine. Maybe Ohio State still makes the playoff and goes on a run. Maybe Miami does the same. Maybe Clemson takes its good fortune to be in the ACC title game and turns that into a playoff berth of its own. Maybe. So we’ll carry the baggage a little further, in spite of all the grief and hurt and anguish. Even if redemption remains painfully beyond our grasp, the price of admission is still worth it.
