The 1987 Clemson Tigers football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team that represented

Clemson University Clemson University () is a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in the student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2019 semester, the university enro ...

in the

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associa ...

(ACC) during the

1987 NCAA Division I-A football season The 1987 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with Miami winning its second national championship of the 1980s in an Orange Bowl game featuring a rare No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup between the top ranked Oklahoma Sooners and the Hurricanes. Miami's ...

. In its tenth season under head coach

Danny Ford Danny Lee Ford (born April 2, 1948) is a former American football player and coach. He played college football at the University of Alabama from 1967 to 1969. He served as the head football coach at Clemson University from 1978 to 1989 and at th ...

, the team compiled a 10–2 record (6–1 against conference opponents), won the ACC championship, defeated

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...

in the

1988 Florida Citrus Bowl The 1988 Florida Citrus Bowl was held on January 1, 1988 at the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The #14 Clemson Tigers defeated the #20 Penn State Nittany Lions The Penn State Nittany Lions are the athletic teams of Pennsylvani ...

, was ranked No. 12 in the final

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...

, and outscored opponents by a total of 333 to 176. The team played its home games at Memorial Stadium in

Clemson, South Carolina Clemson () is a city in Pickens and Anderson counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Clemson is home to Clemson University; in 2015, ''the Princeton Review'' cited the town of Clemson as ranking #1 in the United States for " town-and-gown" ...

Michael Dean Perry Michael Dean Perry (born August 27, 1965) is a former American football defensive lineman and the younger brother of William Perry. His parents are Inez S. Perry and Hollie Perry, Sr. of Aiken, South Carolina. He learned to play football from hi ...

and John Phillips were the team captains. The team's statistical leaders included quarterback Rodney Williams with 1,486 passing yards, Terry Allen with 973 rushing yards, Gary Cooper with 618 receiving yards, and placekicker David Treadwell with 87 points scored (18 field goals, 33 extra points).

Schedule

Personnel

Game summaries

at Virginia Tech

Maryland

Gainesville Sun. 1987 Nov 15. Retrieved 2019-Jan-06.

at South Carolina

Penn State (Florida Citrus Bowl)

Rankings

References

{{Atlantic Coast Conference football champions Clemson Clemson Tigers football seasons Atlantic Coast Conference football champion seasons Citrus Bowl champion seasons

Clemson Tigers football The Clemson Tigers are the American football team at Clemson University. The Tigers compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Atlantic Division of the Atlantic C ...