Swinney names Vizzina his starter for the trip to LSU

Vizzina gets his second career start, and LSU's roster fight resolves itself before kickoff

Swinney ended the summer competition Tuesday, naming Christopher Vizzina his starter for the trip to Baton Rouge: "CV will start for us this week. He's earned that," he told reporters, per Yahoo Sports. Vizzina is 64 of 105 for 596 yards, 4 touchdowns and 1 interception across 14 relief appearances, but the résumé that matters more is the one start he already has — 29 of 42 for 317 yards and 3 touchdowns filling in for an injured Cade Klubnik against SMU last October, the first Clemson quarterback to throw 3 touchdowns in a debut start since Deshaun Watson in 2014. Clemson still lost that game 35-24, and Vizzina spent three years on the bench waiting for this one. Now he runs Chad Morris's offense, with Morris back specifically because Clemson fell out of the top 20 nationally in yards a season ago.

The circus around the opener is the fun part. Swinney's own scouting report on Lane Kiffin's LSU roster — "they've got dudes for dudes for dudes," per Yahoo Sports — landed before that roster turned into a court case: a Baton Rouge judge cleared former NFL players Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris to suit up this season, and Wright told ESPN's Pete Thamel he expected to both make the roster and play against Clemson after two days of practice.

LSU blinked anyway. Both players were left off the 103-man roster LSU actually submitted for tonight, which our own desk covered in LSU Holds Dae'Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris Off Clemson Roster — a call that keeps the door open to add them later while dodging Saturday's fight entirely. Clemson's counsel had separately warned LSU that playing the pair might breach the game contract, per Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger, though the school said it intends to play the game regardless and isn't seeking damages. Vizzina gets his second career start in front of a sold-out Tiger Stadium and the 500th road edition of ESPN's College GameDay, legal fireworks and all.

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First looks in Baton Rouge

Last season ended on a 4-game streak, then Penn State in the bowl

Clemson closed last season with 4 straight wins — Florida State 24-10, Louisville 20-19 on the road, Furman 45-10 and rival South Carolina 28-14 — before Penn State ended it 22-10 on December 27. That finish left the Tigers at 7-6, the second-worst record of the Swinney era, and it's the number hanging over every question about where this team actually stands heading into September.

It's also why the LSU rematch carries extra weight. Clemson opened last season ranked No. 4 nationally and lost 17-10 to these same Tigers, a defeat that colored the entire year that followed. This year's Clemson gets the same opponent to open the season, just on the road this time, and nobody in the building has let last year's opener be forgotten.

Swinney is leaning into being unranked, not fighting it

Clemson dropped out of the preseason AP Top 25 for the first time since 2011 this August, and Swinney's response has been to say the quiet part out loud. "We're a bunch of nobodies, I guess that nobody's our cousin. This is football; it's why you play the games," he told reporters this week, per Sports Illustrated, adding that his players "don't live in a cave" and already know nobody outside the building expects much from a team that finished last season 7-6. It's an odd line from a coach with 14 AP finishes in his last 15 full seasons, but it also tracks with a locker room replacing 12 of last year's 22 starters against LSU specifically.

He wasn't selling false confidence either. Addressing the media Tuesday — the clip above, posted by the program's own account — Swinney said the Tigers "look forward to competing and kicking this thing off," and elsewhere added, "we're gonna have our hands full, but our team certainly believes, ain't no doubt about it." Whatever this Clemson team turns into, it won't be the preseason poll that decided it.

An underdog tonight at LSU, with the whole season riding on one road trip

Clemson is an underdog tonight at LSU, and it's not particularly close — the line opened at Clemson +9.5, a number that says as much about the shakeup at both programs as it does about the scoreboard. Vizzina makes just his second career start against an LSU defense Swinney has already conceded is loaded with talent, and the total opened at 51.5, a middling number that reads less like fireworks and more like two staffs still figuring out who they are.

LSU is 0-0 too, though its last game on record was a 35-38 shootout loss at Houston last season — the kind of defensive no-show that helped talk Kiffin into overhauling his roster this hard in the first place. Whatever Clemson turns into this fall, tonight is the whole season distilled into one road trip: an unranked team that insists it's better than its poll number, kicking that argument off against the coach and the roster everybody's already talking about.