As you may have heard, the ACC Network goes live later this summer. Announced July 21, 2016, the network goes live on Aug. 22 and will beam into most living rooms for the first time a week after that date, when Clemson opens its national title defense at home against Georgia Tech.
There will be a week of content to fill in between the network's first broadcast and its first football game, and we now know one show that will fill that gap.
As that 80-second trailer showed you, All In: The Clemson Football Family will be less All or Nothing -- Amazon Prime's Good, Bad and the Ugly documentary series following one NFL team's season -- and more infomercial. The point of the show will be to tell you all the reasons it's great to be a Clemson Tiger, and that's largely because, well, have you been paying attention lately? It is great to be a Clemson Tiger right now.
"We knew early on that we wanted to do something special with Clemson,” ACC Network senior director of programming and acquisitions said Stacie McCollum. “We wanted to showcase the people and culture behind the program’s success as they prepare to defend their national title. Access programming and storytelling will be hallmarks of this network, and the opportunity to feature the Tigers in our first series is a testament to that commitment. Anyone who loves college football will enjoy this series.”
The series will air in four parts, beginning Sunday, Aug. 25 and running through Wednesday the 28th, all building toward the opener against Georgia Tech. This means that, as the nation turns into ESPN to prepare for the 2019 college and NFL seasons, the Mothership will be shoving reminders to watch their shiny new toy into every nook and cranny available -- and when viewers inevitably flip the channel to ACC Network, they'll find a documentary showing just how great Clemson's culture is.
And, look, the last thing Dabo Swinney needs is another recruiting tool. His most recent team was the first in college football's modern history to put together a 15-0 season, his 2019 team will enter the year ranked No. 1 or 2, and his 2020 recruiting class is shaping up to be perhaps the best of all-time.
But positive publicity for the reigning national champion is kind of like making money when you're already rich -- the more you have of something, the easier it is get more of that thing.