Clemson bowl game locked in: Tigers headed to Florida to play SEC foe

Clemson football will finish its season in Florida.

The Tigers will play the Kentucky Wildcats in the Dec. 29 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, the ACC and the bowl announced Sunday as part of college football’s selection day.

It’ll be Clemson’s 10th appearance in the Gator Bowl, which is played at EverBank Stadium, home of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, and annually pits an ACC team against an SEC team. The Gator Bowl is considered one of the ACC’s upper-tier bowls.

The Action Network has Clemson (8-4) as an early 7.5-point betting favorite over Kentucky (7-5) in the game, which is scheduled for a noon kickoff on ESPN.

News of Clemson’s Gator Bowl selection came as part of a significantly delayed rollout of ACC bowl destinations, a domino effect from Florida State missing out on the four-team College Football Playoff field earlier Sunday.

The Seminoles made history as the first undefeated Power Five conference champion to miss out on the four-team field and, as a result, earned the automatic bid to the Orange Bowl and essentially pushed every ACC team below it down a peg in terms of selection. That was especially the case for upper-tier assignments.

Clemson had been heavily linked to the Dec. 27 Holiday Bowl in San Diego heading into the weekend and also had some buzz for the Dec. 27 Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte before being placed in the Gator Bowl. 247Sports reported earlier this week the school’s preference was to play in either the Gator Bowl or Holiday Bowl.

The Tigers’ 2023 appearance in the Gator Bowl will be their 10th all time, which is more than any other bowl in the school’s 100-plus year history. Clemson is 4-5 in nine previous Gator Bowls.

The Tigers’ last appearance in the Gator Bowl came in the 2008 season. The Tigers lost to Nebraska, 26-21, in coach Dabo Swinney’s first bowl game as the team’s full-time coach. He’d been named head coach at the end of the 2008 season after replacing the fired Tommy Bowden as interim coach mid-year.

And Clemson’s last game against Kentucky came in the 2009 Music City Bowl in Nashville. The Tigers beat the Wildcats 21-13 in that game and are 5-8 all-time against Kentucky, which finished 7-5 and 3-5 in the SEC this season.

“My first ever bowl game as a coach was the 1993 Gator Bowl as a graduate assistant at Alabama and my first ever bowl game as a head coach was the Gator Bowl with Clemson at the end of the 2008 season, so this selection feels very full circle,” Swinney said in a statement. “This is a great bowl with a great history and rich tradition in an area I’m super familiar with. It’s an area I’ve recruited, and I’ve got a lot of love for Duval County, especially with the Jags having three of our guys there.”

“I also want to congratulate Kentucky on their selection and for having a great season so far. Coach Stoops is one of the best coaches in the business. The job he’s done at Kentucky has been phenomenal to watch, and I know it will be an incredibly competitive matchup.”

Clemson season in review

The Tigers went 8-4 and 4-4 in the ACC this season, falling well short of the national championship expectations everyone from Swinney down embraced this offseason but ending the regular season on a four-game win streak, including wins over ranked Notre Dame and UNC teams and rival South Carolina.

The Gator Bowl, played four days after Christmas, will offer Clemson an opportunity to end 2023 on a high note after its worst start to ACC play since 1998. The Tigers can also remind fans of the excitement they should have for 2024 with quarterback Cade Klubnik and a number of talented underclassmen back in the fold.

This will be Clemson’s second non-New Year’s Six Bowl in three seasons after the Tigers played in one of those games every season from 2015-20 while making six straight College Football Playoff appearances and winning two national titles.

Clemson played in the Cheez-It Bowl in 2021, beating Iowa State, and the Orange Bowl last year as the ACC champion, losing to Tennessee. That slippage from the top tier of the sport has in part prompted Swinney to make staff changes for a second straight season. Clemson parted ways with two assistant coaches Thursday and hired two new ones Monday.