Authors: Kendall Parrish, Raine Riley, and Will Henderson
Clemson football is back for the 2020 season and dominated in their first home game against The Citadel. Although the stadium may look very different this year because of the precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, nearly 19,000 Clemson Tiger fans and students were able to watch from the stands.
The media trend slowly increased as the game got closer with 16,700 tweets about the topic. Fans shared their excitement for the Clemson Tigers while some had strong opinions about the difficulty in the schedule. Many influential accounts including @Newsweek, @TSN_Sports, @USATODAY, and @ClayTravis who were reporting on the game live.
Clemson University has made its mark in college football, dominating in recent years. Since Coach Dabo Swinney took the interim head coach position back in 2008, the entire program has been reimagined and become a legacy. Clemson football has been national finalists in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and are expected to play for the national title again this year.
The dedicated fans and students still went to Memorial Stadium this weekend to cheer on their team as well as many safely gathered in their homes to watch from the television. The student section was certainly much more quiet than usual, but that didn’t stop Clemson from absolutely dominating The
Citadel. During the first half, Clemson was up 49-0, further proving the skill-level throughout the program. True freshman DJ Uiagalelei (@shaboidj) scored his first touchdown in his college
football career, surely the first of many to come as Trevor Lawerence (@tlawrence16) plans to go to the NFL Draft next year. Coach Swinney put second- and third-string players in for the second half where no points were scored from either team.
YouTube has been relatively prominent in the conversation trends this week as many users have been discussing the Big Ten coming back and predictions for the season. We saw spikes in YouTube engagement the days leading to Clemson’s first home game of the season (over 1,800 engagements) as well as forum replies (over 500) this week, largely discussing the level of difficulty in Clemson’s football schedule. Many users argue the schedule lacks difficulty, which is the reason the players have such great statistics compared to teams in the SEC or Big Ten.
Overall, fans are always going to root for their team – either wearing masks in the stands or watching on television. While the topic is slowly quieting after Saturday, we should expect to see the conversations elevate as the season continues and the Clemson Tigers get closer to another shot at a national title. With talented players and a competitive spirit, dominant sports influencers in the United States will find it difficult to not consider ranking Clemson as number one in college football this year.
Full Analysis:
Purpose: To analyze the thoughts and sentiments surrounding Clemson University’s first home football game this season against The Citadel.
Analysis Time Frame: September 13th – September 20th, 2020
Overall Trends
- Increasing amount of conversations during the past week leading up to the game with the largest spike on Saturday, September 19th
- Majority of the conversations about Clemson vs. The Citadel were positive (64.1% Positive Sentiment)
- Users have been sharing the results of the game won by Clemson University
- Conversations have largely criticized the Clemson college football schedule
- Clemson football fans celebrated their anticipated win
Throughout the week of September 13th, there have been 16,700 tweets (up 95%) containing the
following keywords:
- Keyword Group 1: Clemson AND home game, Clemson AND first game, Clemson AND football, Clemson AND game, Clemson AND Citadel, Clemson football AND first game, Clemson football AND win
- Keyword Group 2 : Clemson AND student section, Clemson AND football tickets, Clemson football AND covid, Clemson football AND coronavirus, Clemson football AND covid19, Clemson football AND student section, Clemson football AND covid-19, Clemson football AND tickets
- Keyword Group 3 : #clemsoncitadel, #clemsonfootball, #clemsonhomegame, #clemsonwin
Impact
- Group 1: 20,148 (98.2%)
- Group 2: 282 (1.4%)
- Group 3: 77 (0.4%)
Trends in Conversation
Twitter conversations related to Clemson playing against The Citadel football team this weekend:
- On September 16th, 2020 there were 4403 tweets mentioning Clemson football relating to Big Ten returning
- The Citadel and Clemson football game was on September 19th totaling 5523 tweets
- Conversations are mostly occurring in the U.S.
Top influencers:
- @Newsweek
- @TSN_Sports
- @USATODAY
- @ClayTravis
Top words used during the week:
Clemson, football, Citadel, game also college, home, Trevor, Lawrence, Texas
Looking at the word cloud we can see many users were posting about the first home game of the season for Clemson and reported the score of the game
YouTube
Conversations slowed over YouTube during the week and is now steady
- 1,800 engagements total
- Most engagements involve game predictions and player statistics
Forum Replies
- 514 posts surrounding college football and the predictions for the Clemson football season
- Conversations include fans posting about their team, predictions of the season, and final statistics from the game
- Team accounts: @clemsonfb and @citadelfootball
- Top influencers: @espncfb and @cfbplayoffs
- Top hashtags include:
- #clemsonfootball – 174K+ posts
- #citadelfootball – 1K+ posts
- #clemsonfb – 15.8K+ posts
- #collegefb- 5K+ posts
