College football Week 8 highlights

On Saturday, Clemson turned the ball over four times, trailed by as much as 14, benched its starting QB, and won. That, Dabo Swinney said, is the headline.

Got it?

No, don’t ask about that QB controversy. It doesn’t exist. Figment of your imagination. Swinney is essentially Kevin Bacon at the end of “Animal House,” standing in the midst of a stampede and yelling, “All is well!”

Swinney spent the entire offseason hyping DJ Uiagalelei, despite his struggles in 2021. He’s spent the first seven weeks of the season dishing out one “I told you so” after another, including as recently as last week, when he called doubts of Uiagalelei “embarrassing,” and a product of “the world we live in now.”

And when Clemson was trailing by 10 and Uiagalelei coughed up his third turnover of the game midway through the third quarter, Swinney came with the hook.

Why? Swinney believed freshman Cade Klubnik could give the offense a spark, and the move worked. Clemson scored on three of its next four drives. Sure, Klubnik completed just two passes in the game, so his inspiration was more Rob Schneider in “The Waterboy” than Jeff Daniels in “Independence Day.” But hey, a win is a win.

In the aftermath, Swinney emphatically assured Clemson fans that Uiagalelei was still the starter as the Tigers, now 8-0, head into an off week with the ACC Atlantic all but assured. They will not play another ranked opponent this year.

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Clemson switches quarterbacks in the second half and overcomes four turnovers to beat Syracuse 24-21.

But Swinney is right. The world is a cold, callous place, and so we must also ask the bigger question: Is this an 8-0 team capable of winning a national championship?

If this was 2020, the answer might be an emphatic, “Yes!” After all, we’d seen Clemson shrug off mediocrity before and still keep winning. Look back at Swinney’s first title in 2016. That year, the Tigers struggled against Troy, only beat NC State because of a missed chip shot as time expired, and lost to Pitt….