What Clemson is

Sep 10, 2020, 6:39 PM

We are down to a couple days until the start of a new season of Clemson football. By Saturday around 7:40pm, most of us will be more excited than we have been in the last 8 months. But judging from a lot of the sentiment on Tigernet recently, half the posts before, during and after the game will be about the decals the players are wearing on their helmets or some other political statement they have made.

You can be a fan of Clemson football whether you agree with them or not, but you should know going in that the men on the field and the men and women on the sidelines are a part of a team and an educational institution that is liberal by most definitions (and extremely liberal by most of the definitions thrown around on here). Going by the most common proxy for liberal that I see used on the boards - "supporting Democrats" - Clemson is extremely liberal. In a recent poll of current college students, 71% support Biden and 17% support Trump. The highest number for Trump among college students in any of the polls is 19%. The numbers for professors and administration are about the same, and they are even lower for student athletes and athletic staff.

For comparison, nearly double (32%) supported Trump In the state of California. If you automatically label California as liberal, you should label Clemson that way too. Even the Clemson College Republicans support Democrats (or at least they don't support Trump). One of the leaders of the Clemson College Republicans, who is also the student Chairman of the statewide College Republicans, did an anti-Trump video for the group Republican Voters Against Trump that got over a million views.

I am proud of Clemson and I am proud of the players who represent Clemson by using their voice to stand up for what they believe in. I say that even though I don't agree with everything each of them says. But if you are pained and angered by the idea of supporting a team that is part of a liberal institution, a team who will be using their voice to take what you might consider liberal stances, you may be in for a lot of pain and anger.

After DW and Nuk spoke out about the name changes, I saw post after post taking shots at them and using the words "they" and "us," implying and sometimes explicitly stating that the "us" is Clemson and "they" are somehow not Clemson. The players on the field, past and present, and especially people like DW and Nuk, are the very definition of the "us" that is Clemson. They are Clemson. They define what "us" is more than anyone on this board ever will. If DW decides to kneel tonight, as he has before, he is still just as much a part of what Clemson is as he was before.

Whether any of us like it or not, the days of "shut up and play" are over. In the words of Trevor Lawrence: “It's easy to stay quiet because you don't want to make people mad, but my thoughts on it ... you know those aren’t the kind of fans you want."

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What Clemson is

Astute post but unreal stats of only 17% support Repubs and/or the President!

Re: Astute post but unreal stats of only 17% support Repubs and/or the President!

I'll NEVER support Communists

And in case you're really ignorant..

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Re: What Clemson is

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