Clemson TE on the SEC: ‘They’re like the face of college football’

Clemson’s game at Auburn on Saturday will be special for Tigers tight end Jordan Leggett, and not just because it’ll mark his last season opener in a Clemson uniform.

Leggett’s also anxious for the game because of the conference Clemson’s opponent is a part of.

“I love playing against SEC schools, just because they’re like the face of college football,” he said. “These games are always really fun to play in. I’m really excited.”

The Florida native was rated as one of the top 100 players in the country coming out of high school and had offers from several of the top programs in the country, including a host of SEC schools. He opted to attend Clemson, in part, because he thought playing in the ACC would allow him to play early.

“When I was picking schools to come to in college, I didn’t want to go to the SEC because I feel like if you go there, you’re not going to play until your redshirt junior year or redshirt senior year,” Leggett said. “That’s kind of what went around my whole high school. I wanted to go to a top ACC program. That’s why I came here.”

Leggett is a believer in conference pride, and will be rooting for Florida State at Ole Miss on Monday.

“Playing against the SEC, I feel like you’re playing on the biggest stage playing schools like that,” he said. “I get excited when FSU goes out there and beats Florida. I think this division is going to be one of the better divisions after a couple of more years.”

With that said, Leggett is aware that for the ACC to change its perception as being behind the SEC, the conference as a whole needs to win more big games.

“We’re going to be the underdogs for a while until we keep proving others wrong and keep winning more national championships,” he said.

PLAN IN PLACE

Dabo Swinney has a plan in place if Clemson’s headsets go out on this trip to Auburn like they did last time Clemson played at Jordan-Hare Stadium ... sort of.

“If we have some crazy situation like that, we’ll wave at them to come on down… ‘Everybody come on down boys and we’ll handle it from the sidelines,’” he said with a smile. “That’s our contingency. That’s about it. We can keep rockin’ and rollin.’ ”

BIGGER GOALS AHEAD

Clemson has won at least 10 games for five straight seasons and played in the national title game last year, but Swinney said the Tigers still have plenty left to accomplish and he’s nowhere near satisfied.

“Last time I checked, every time we lined up to play in ’09 we were expected to win, and when we didn’t there wasn’t anybody in here saying, ‘Oh, it’s Ok. We didn’t really need to win that game. We didn’t have to win that game,’ ” he said. “My expectation is that we’ve still got a long ways to go. We’ve made good progress, but until we go and win two or three national championships, we’re just little old Clemson.”