Players, coaches and teams with the most at stake on Saturday.

With its convincing win over Florida State on Saturday night, Clemson moved into sole possession of first place in the ACC's Atlantic Division, potentially setting up the Tigers for their first-ever berth in the ACC Championship Game. That sentence should strike terror into the hearts of Clemson fans, whose optimism and confidence in prospective title runs has been cruelly betrayed each of the past three seasons.

Sometimes the collapse comes late, as in 2006's November collapse, or in 2007, when Clemson only needed to beat Boston College at home to sew up the division but gave up the winning touchdown pass on a busted coverage with less than two minutes to play. Then there was last year, when the title hopes of the overwhelming conference favorite evaporated before the clock hit double zeroes in the season opener. Either way, though, putting the phrase "division leader" anywhere near "Clemson" in a sentence has been the sportswriting equivalent of dousing a voodoo doll with gasoline and lighting a cigarette.

In fairness to the Tigers, I should probably point out that the good Doc debunked the notion of Clemson as perpetual underachiever at his old digs. Well, maybe not so much "debunked" as "balanced": While it's accurate to say that high preseason expectations were the program's kiss of death under Tommy Bowden, it's just as accurate to say that Clemson overachieved in years it was unheralded in the preseason.

With that in mind, maybe this year's Clemson team really is destined for greater things -- with a new coach and some big question marks at the offensive skill positions, the Tigers failed to crack the preseason polls and were a consensus runner-up (behind Florida State) in the Atlantic Division.

Full disclosure: On this site back in March, I openly questioned Clemson's decision to hire that new coach, Dabo Swinney, whose coaching resumé was fairly thin when the program took off the interim tag last December and gave its just-promoted receivers coach a full-time contract. To that extent, I've been fairly impressed with what Swinney has accomplished so far. He's now 10-6 at Clemson, with a 4-3 mark as interim coach (including a road win over Boston College in his second game and a dominating victory over hated South Carolina) and a 6-3 record this year; currently, the Tigers are riding a four-game winning streak that includes a 38-3 dismantling of Wake Forest, a thrilling overtime upset at Miami and last week's C.J. Spiller-powered victory over the Seminoles.

But you can't really talk about that streak without also mentioning the 2-3 start that preceded it, a roller-coaster opening month that included an almost-comeback from a 24-0 deficit at Georgia Tech as well as a come-from-ahead loss to Maryland that represents half of the Terps' wins on the year. That loss is likely to be on the minds of the more jaded members of Clemson's fan base as the Tigers head to Raleigh for this weekend's tussle with N.C. State.

In theory, the Tigers should be able to all but name their score against the wretched Wolfpack defense, which gave up a total of 101 points to Duke and Boston College last month, but any team that failed to crack 300 net yards against Maryland can only be so confident. If State can somehow figure out a way to corral Spiller -- who's responsible for more than a third of Clemson's offensive yards this season and more than 40 percent of the team's production over its last three wins over I-A teams -- then all of a sudden the game becomes one of those inexplicable dogfights that, paradoxically, we've come to expect from the ACC.

A loss at N.C. State (or against equally sneaky, desperate Virginia next week) wouldn't automatically hand the Atlantic Division trophy over to Boston College, since the Eagles have three ACC games left on their schedule and thus three opportunities to hand it right back. Nor would it take all of the shine off what has otherwise been a fairly promising campaign in Swinney's first full season in the driver's seat. But it would look distressingly familiar to a fan base that became practically conditioned to late-season faceplants under Tommy Bowden, and would prompt the inevitable questions from the pundit class as to whether such collapses have become a trademark not of Bowden but of the program itself. If Swinney wants to demonstrate that he really has brought a new energy and mentality to Clemson, winning big ACC games in November is the best argument he can make.