The undefeated defending national champion Clemson Tigers are No. 4 in The Associated Press college football poll.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney had a bit of a sarcastic response to the drop, which followed a 45-10 win over Louisville.
It appears his assistant coaches are following his lead.
“I think somebody told me yesterday we’ve won five games by 31 points or more and you look at Bama, who’s No. 1, and they’ve won three, and two of them were vs. Group of Five,” Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott said, per The State. “It’s not really the rhetoric that we are seeing out there. I think it’s just natural when you’ve won as many games as we’ve won, I mean I can remember as a college football fan that gets old at some point when somebody else is winning that much.”
Scott’s not wrong. The Tide defeated New Mexico State 62-10 and Southern Miss 49-7.
“For us, we really just laugh about it and joke around about it," he said. "Somebody said the other day if we keep winning at this rate, we’ll be out of the top 10 by December. So we kind of laugh about it for a little bit.”
While the Tigers have slipped, the point gap between Alabama and Clemson is 78 this week, the smallest margin between Nos. 1 and 4 this season.
It doesn’t seem teams give up the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll without losing. Most recently, in 2015, defending national champion and preseason No. 1 Ohio State dropped to No. 2 in November while getting to 10-0.
In the case of Clemson, the last time a preseason No. 1 took a similar tumble while winning all its games was 1971, when Notre Dame dropped all the way to No. 7 while starting 5-0, according The Associated Press.