sxx123: the second, Indias top five were gone for less than 1

the second, Indias top five were gone for less than 1

27 Dec 2018 at 03:17

This story appears in ESPN The Magazines August 22 College Football Preview Issue. Cheap Baseball Jerseys . Subscribe today!ON THE FIRST day of spring practice at Clemson University, just seven weeks after the Tigers fell to Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship, wide receiver Kanyon Tuttle opened his locker and saw the jersey waiting for him.Hey, are practice jerseys the same as our real jersey numbers? he asked defensive end Jaquarius Brice.Most likely, Brice replied.Tuttle is new to the Tigers, a walk-on transfer entering as a redshirt freshman. But hes also a Clemson legacy. His father, Perry -- Clemsons first Sports Illustrated cover subject -- made one of the Tigers most iconic catches, a leaping touchdown grab in the Orange Bowl victory that gave Clemson the 1981 national title. Tuttle wanted to be sure about the number.Come fall, hed be wearing 81.Tuttle hadnt requested the jersey. In fact, while at South Carolina State, where he spent one season, hed flatly asked not to wear 22, his fathers number. But Dabo Swinney is not one to scoff at symbolic gestures. Before last seasons title game, Clemson players fortuitously voted No. 19 Charone Peake and No. 81 Stanton Seckinger as two of the captains. They stood side by side at midfield for the coin toss, just as Swinney had instructed. By the ?end of the game, Deshaun Watson had almost single-handedly upended Alabama, gaining 478 total yards in the most prolific offensive performance in national championship game history, but failed to deliver the win.Later that first week of spring practice, when Tuttle sat down to team dinner, Clemsons coach offered him an explanation.You know why I gave you No. 81, right? Swinney asked.Im not sure, Tuttle fibbed.I want you to have that jersey for 81, Swinney said. We can win a national championship this year, and it will be special for you to wear that number if we do.Nearly 35 years have come and gone since Perry Tuttle caught that 13-yard touchdown pass from Homer Jordan to help take home the 1981 title, and the Tigers are still looking for their second championship. The icons of that era -- Perry Tuttle and coach Danny Ford and captain Jeff Davis -- remain frozen in time. Tuttles trips to the Esso Club, Clemsons longtime meat-and-three joint, escalate into full-blown fan events. So it is in the upstate town of Clemson, South Carolina: Its the summer of 2016 and forever 1981.Nostalgia permeates this years roster. There is Kanyon Tuttle, but there are also Judah and J.D. Davis, and Cannon Smith and Jarvis Magwood. Their fathers, Jeff Davis, Bill Smith and Frank Magwood, were part of the pulse of the 1981 team. Even one of the current student trainers, Wyatt Craig, followed in his fathers 1981 footsteps.Other connections feel just as vital. Davis now serves as an assistant athletic director of football player relations; hes an everyday mentor and de facto counselor for the teams student-athletes. Reggie Pleasant, who was Davis teammate on defense, is the teams life coach.Man, the fiber of 1981 is interwoven into whats happening right now, Jeff Davis says.Still, that connection is lost on some of todays players. On the wall in the receivers position room hang photos of the 14 Clemson wideouts drafted by the NFL, Perry Tuttle included. During a meeting in the last week of spring practice, more than a month after Kanyon learned hed be wearing 81, teammate Mike Williams turned to him: Hold up, is that your dad? Williams asked.Theres a lot of history here these players didnt witness. But theres also a chance for them to make some of their own. This year, with its Heisman-favorite quarterback, 10 preseason All-ACC players and top-five hype, Clemson looks primed to finally cut that 1981 cord. Theres just one last hurdle.We have to win it, J.D. Davis says.DESHAUN WATSON FEELS deep-in-his-bones certain that he can lead the Tigers to 15 wins in 2016, a belief he relays with all the gusto of a librarian. This notion of a perfect season is not hyperbole for him. Its simply another box to check before his time in Clemson is up.Leaning against a railing in the cobwebbed bowels of Memorial Stadium, with Howards Rock and that vaunted hill visible in the distance, Watson feels far removed from the frenzy that envelops Death Valley on autumn Saturdays. Hes in Clemson orange, a paw print on his right chest, as he considers his upcoming junior season.Not winning all of the games? he says. That would be short for what we can do as a team.He smiles, almost reluctantly. It is a modest concession that 15 -- 0, more wins than any other team in college footballs modern era, is borderline absurd. But Watson is a rare talent -- his 86.7 Total QBR ranked fifth in the nation last year -- and he has plenty of toys in running back Wayne Gallman and receivers Mike Williams and Artavis Scott. The ACC, save for one (albeit mammoth) stumbling block in Tallahassee, is mostly forgiving. Other than Nick Saban, no coach in college football boasts a hotter hand than Swinney.If Clemson is to emerge from the haze of its 1981 legacy, Watson -- whom Saban called the best player since Cam Newton -- will light the way. He threw six touchdowns in his collegiate debut as a starter two years ago, defeating North Carolina 50-35 at home. He traveled to New York City last year as a Heisman Trophy finalist -- Clemsons first -- en route to becoming the first player in FBS history to pass for 4,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in a season. (Hed end the night in third place, behind Alabamas Derrick Henry and Stanfords Christian McCaffrey.) He doesnt so much run as he glides -- a graceful, loping stride. Few can catch him in the pocket; hes an escape artist with a deadly deep touch.Watson is also deeply visual. He committed to Clemson early in 2012, on national signing day of his sophomore year in high school. When he went back to his home in Gainesville, Georgia, that February night, he sat in his bedroom with a spiral notebook and wrote down what he wanted to achieve by the end of his tenure at Clemson.Start as a freshman.Two Heismans.Undefeated season.National championship.Watson tore out the page and put it by his mirror. Every time he looked at himself, he also looked at the road ahead.He put his past in ink too. Before his sophomore season at Clemson, Watson tattooed 815 on both arms as an homage to the government housing, 815 Harrison Square, that he called home until he was 11. His family moved out in 2006 with help from Habitat for Humanity, but that first home -- the grind, he calls it -- stays with him.Hes forging ahead with an eye on the past, which makes him right at home in Clemson.NOW THAT SWINNEY brings his own guts and Watson wears orange, it can be tough to remember that for nearly two full decades after Danny Ford stepped down in 1990, Clemson toiled in college footballs wasteland: irrelevance.Ford was 33 when he led the Tigers to their national title (he remains the youngest coach to ever reach that mark), and he spent the next eight years basking in a blissful union with the programs fan base. Hoo boy, did they love him. They loved that they saw themselves in the country-boy-turned-big-time. They loved the way he chewed his tobacco and visited his farm between practices. And they loved him because he won: After the national championship would come three more 10-win seasons, four more ACC titles and four more bowl victories. Ford transformed a small school from a small town in the ACC -- that basketball conference -- into a football heavyweight.His winning set the standard, and his personality set the standard too, says Tommy Bowden, who coached at Clemson from 1999 to 2008. Thats why Im not there.Fords departure was darkened by accusations of NCAA infractions (the second such charge of his era -- Clemson played on probation from 1982 to 84 for recruiting violations) and bad blood with the administration. But no one matched his heights. After 1991, the Tigers yielded no 10-win seasons and no ACC titles, let alone a national one. And if you were a coach of Clemson football and your name was not Danny Ford? Well, Godspeed, because you were following a man whose resignation was met with a 6,000-strong candlelight vigil.For years, I thought he was God, says a middle-aged man at Dyars Diner, a local institution just 4 miles from the Clemson campus. Ford, whos just joined the after-church crowd lining up for lunch, playfully waves him off.Oh, just a real live person with all bad habits, he jokes.Ford comes to Dyars nearly every day, usually around noon. Its about a five-minute drive from his farm, the land he secured as part of his second coaching contract in the early 1980s. He calls the waitresses honey, they call him Danny, and his regular table is located just beneath a 36-by-20 photograph of his younger self crouched on the Clemson sideline more than 30 years ago.That enduring adoration is why Perry Tuttle loves Clemson too, calls it the best thing ever to happen to him, other than his wife, his children and his faith. But its complicated when youre still seen as the 22-year-old in a tear-away jersey catching touchdown passes. Its why he stopped wearing orange on his return trips to Pickens County. Its why he signs every Jan. 11, 1982, issue of Sports Illustrated handed to him but wont display one in his own home. Tuttle is writing a book hes calling My Next Season, a self-help manifesto on how to get unstuck, he says.My lead title is Perry the Catch, or Perry Sports Illustrated ... and Im OK with that, he says. It just takes people a while to really hear you when you have something else to say.And thats the real catch: There is no outrunning history for Tuttle, or for Ford, or for their team, until a new generation shows them the door.HOLDING COURT IN the space between 1981 and now is Dabo Swinney.We need to enjoy this moment, he says before the start of his annual media golf outing in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The heat index is creeping toward triple digits, and hes still a long-running pregame speech come to life. This journey, this practice, this game, this bus ride, this meal ... This is the best of times.The best of times at Clemson has always meant one coach and one team and one era. But he has a point. In 2015, Clemson claimed a No. 1 ranking for the first time since finishing there in 1981.Theres always been this longing for the 80s, you know? Everything was, Well, we havent done this since the 80s. We havent done this since 1991. We havent done this ... Swinneys arms flail a little, punctuating each objection. [But] when it gets to 2020, were gonna look back and were gonna see this was the best decade in Clemson football history.For now, the two eras circle each other but tread lightly around each other. Ford attends nearly every home game but keeps his distance from the football offices. He doesnt want to get in the way. Watson admits he would get a 50 if pop-quizzed on the 1981 team. Jeff Davis needles Watson that Homer Jordan won his and lets loose a belly laugh. But in Davis day-to-day work with Watson, and with the team, hes here, in 2016, and expects them to be too. I dont want that when they see me coming, they see 81.Swinney nods to the past with abandon but repeats his mantra that these are the good old days. He doesnt want to recapture 1981; he wants to reimagine it. For all its nostalgic glow, that era reached the mountaintop, then dived headfirst off the other side. Swinney is after uncommon consistency, what he says distinguishes the Alabamas and Ohio States, so that when a down year inevitably comes, the question is not if Clemson will regain its footing but when.Five straight seasons with 10-plus wins, two ACC titles and a national championship appearance make Swinney a believer that the Tigers have reached that point. There are signs hes not alone.I dont get nearly as many calls wanting to know why I dont coach no more as I used to, Ford says with a laugh, then winks. They have semi-dribbled down to nothing.Ford will be back in Death Valley this season to watch the Tigers attempt another run at a title. Perry Tuttle will too. Maybe hell raise his arms in celebration for Kanyon and his teammates. Clemson honored the 1981 teams 10th anniversary, its 20th, 25th and 30th, but there are no formal plans this season to commemorate the 35th.The 2016 Tigers are focused on a celebration all their own. Wholesale Baseball Jerseys China . Tracey comes to the Blue Bombers after spending over a decade with Queens University. Most recently he was the schools assistant football coach. Discount Nike MLB Jerseys . It was just business as usual for the Thunder at home. Durant scored 32 points and the Thunder beat the Bulls 107-95 on Thursday night for their eighth straight win. www.cheapmlbjerseys.info/ . He said Tuesday thats a big reason why he is now the new coach of the Tennessee Titans. Whisenhunt said he hit it off quickly with Ruston Webster when interviewing for the job Friday night. Vishys counterattack lights up ChepaukIndia vs. West Indies, Madras, 1975Gundappa Viswanaths?daredevilry, which mesmerised the Chepauk full house, was a bold rescue act, which romantics swear would rarely be bettered.?At Eden Gardens, in the third Test, his 139 in the second innings was the catalyst to India winning their first match and keeping the five-Test series alive. Chepauk offered a slow, turning pitch in the fourth Test. Andy Roberts, however, was menacingly fast and precise, extracting extra bounce and having Indian hearts skip in fear. Viswanath came in at 24 for 2 and watched wickets tumble. At 117 for 8, it seemed all over for India. But Viswanath and Bishan Bedi remained resolute. Viswanath dished out a range of artistic strokes - square drives, straight drives, on drives and flicks. The 52-run partnership for the ninth wicket, during which Bedi faced only 23 balls, helped India to 190.Viswanath was undefeated on 97 and went back laughing. Roberts, who took 7 for 64, went back brooding. Erapalli Prasanna and Bedi then restricted West Indies first-innings lead to only two runs. Viswanath was among the runs in Indias second innings as well, his 93-run stand for the sixth wicket with Anshuman Gaekwad set West Indies a target of 255. Bhagwath Chandrasekhar burst through the defences of Gordon Greenidge with a fast legbreak. Farokh Engineer pouched Viv Richards brilliantly. Lloyd leapt out against Prasanna and was duly stumped. Alvin Kallicharan resisted with a fifty, but India won an hour into lunch to level the series after being 2-0 down.By Nagraj GollapudiBefore Kolkata 2001, there was Melbourne 1981India vs. Australia, Melbourne, 1981Before Kolkata 2001, there was Melbourne 1981. India bowled out for 237, three frontline bowlers injured, and in store, endless suffering in one of the most unforgiving settings in Test cricket: Australia on top at MCG. Australia went on to take an 182-run lead, which should have been enough to shut India out, but there was some rare pluck shown until then. Shivlal Yadav batted with a broken toe to see Gundappa Vishwanath to a hundred, then bowled 32 overs with painkiller injections in every session.Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan then - remember the altercation with Dennis Lillee? - led a batting resurgence to set Australia 143 in the fourth innings. From the moment Greg Chappell was bowled to a filthy long hop from Karsan Ghavri in the dying moments of day four, India believed they were destined to win. The pitch, slow and uneven by now, reminded them of home, which is another reason for this irresistible belief. With Australia 24 for 3 at the start of the final day, the injured Kapil Dev came back to bowl unchanged for 16.4 overs, straight and into the pitch, taking five wickets to bowl India to a 59-run win.By Sidharth MongaIndia ends 64 year Lords waitIndia vs. England, Lords, 1986India had been playing Tests at Lords, the home of cricket, since their arrival on the Test stage in 1932. But of their ten encounters previous to this one in 1986, eight had ended in defeat and the other two had been drawn. Three years ago, Kapil Dev and his men had shocked the world by lifting the World Cup at Lords but Test success at the games most hallowed venue remained elusive.David Gowers team had an unsettled air about it as the series began with his captaincy facing questions. Wholesale MLB Jerseys Authentic. An assured hundred from Graham Gooch, who would score a triple century at the same venue against India four years later, was the bright spot in an otherwise insipid first innings batting effort. Derek Pringle made a combative 63 but as many as six English batsmen failed to cross double figures as they folded up for 294. Indias bowling attack was led by the sprightly Chetan Sharma who secured a place on the honours board with a five wicket haul with Roger Binny picking up a further three. Indias riposte with the bat was led by the man who would come to be known as the Lord of Lords. Dilip Vengsarkar had made hundreds in his previous two visits to the venue and constructed another masterpiece here. There was little support for Vengsarkar, who stroked 16 fours in his vigil and remained not out as India folded up for 341.A lead of 47 was by no means substantial but the all-round quality of Indias bowling attack decisively shifted the game in their favour. Kapil Dev was masterful with the new ball, picking up the first three wickets including the dangerous Gooch and captain Gower before the deficit was erased. The left arm spin of Maninder Singh flummoxed the lower order and India were left with just 134 to accomplish a famous win. Despite an stutter with the loss of openers Gavaskar and Srikanth, India werent to be denied. It took them 42 overs to go past the target for the loss of five wickets and take the series lead. Lords had been conquered and in a few days the second Test at Headingley was pocketed too as India clinched the series 2-0. It was the first time they had won more than one Test on a tour of England.By Gaurav KalraSrinath skittles South Africa out at MoteraIndia vs. South Africa, Ahmedabad, 1996A victory which was vintage Indian cricket, but then again not. Ahmedabad was the first of three Tests on South Africas first full tour of India. A dry, brown Motera wicket shrieked spin and promised hot-tin-roof-style batting and a low scorer and it was. A bowlers Test as expected but the victory not earned through a familiar template - bat once, bat big and let the spinners on. Allan Donald, pace and variation through the air cut through the Indian first innings, but Sunil Joshi, Anil Kumble and Narendra Hirwani kept the first innings lead down to 21.In the second, Indias top five were gone for less than 100 and only a fifty-plus partnership between a debutant called VVS Laxman and Kumble, helped set 170 as a target. South Africa had two days to get it, if only they could hold off the spinners. It was when Ahmedabad, its brown crumbler and dry winter air, produced the surprise in fast bowler Javagal Srinath firing the ball in - speed, accuracy, in swinger, off-cutter - slicing and dicing. His 12 overs dismantled South Africas batting and intention, two of the top three gone without a run on the board, only three batsmen getting to double figures. Srinath 6-21saw South Africa dismissed inside 39 overs with India winning by 64 runs. A runaway script, an unpredictable Test, an unexpected finish.By Sharda Ugra Cheap Throwback Baseball Detroit Tigers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Colorado Rockies Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Houston Astros Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Kansas City Royals Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Los Angeles Angels Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Los Angeles Dodgers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Miami Marlins Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Milwaukee Brewers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Minnesota Twins Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball New York Mets Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball New York Yankees Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Oakland Athletics Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Philadelphia Phillies Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Pittsburgh Pirates Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball San Diego Padres Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball San Francisco Giants Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Seattle Mariners Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball St. Louis Cardinals Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Tampa Bay Rays Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Texas Rangers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Toronto Blue Jays Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Washington Nationals Jerseys ' ' ' 



Share

Add comment

Guests are not allowed to Add blog comments. Please sign in.

Rate

Your rate: 0
Total: 0 (0 votes)

Tags

No Tags