Analyst, Former Tiger Fires Back at Dinich for Clemson Criticism

ESPN’s Heather Dinich was critical of Clemson in a segment on the network’s Get Up show Tuesday morning, and her comments certainly got Eric Mac Lain fired up.

The former Clemson standout offensive lineman and current ACC Network analyst joined “Out of Bounds” with William Qualkinbush on The Roar WCCP FM on Tuesday afternoon to vent his frustration with what Dinich had to say about the Tigers.

Dinich, ESPN’s lead College Football Playoff insider, opined that Clemson is the “most overrated team” at No. 14 in the preseason AP Top 25 Poll that was released Monday.

“Why so much love for the Clemson Tigers?” Dinich said . “They had four conference losses last year, which is as many as they’ve had combined in the past six seasons.

“People keep telling me their defense is going to be great – their defense is always pretty good. But they’ve got to get a quarterback. Cade Klubnik is back. Until we see offensive improvement, I don’t see why there should be so much love for the Clemson Tigers.”

Mac Lain, who played for the Tigers from 2011-15 and joined ACC Network in 2019, fired back at Dinich on The Roar with a lengthy response to her quote.

“First of all, I’m just kind of sick of hearing people – and this isn’t just a one-person thing, this is an industry thing – I’m kind of sick of just hearing people talk about a conference, about a team, that they don’t know anything about,” Mac Lain said. “I’m so sick of it, and it’s ridiculous when you have, number one, a partner, a conference network… anytime I hear somebody that has no clue what they’re talking about, talking about a league, ex-league – or even worse, that clearly represents and has latched onto, and the only reason they exist is because of another league, talking about the ACC – I can’t stand it, and it just gets all kinds of clicks. …

“Just to look at the quote – and I didn’t watch it, I only saw it… What is, ‘Pretty good’ to you, Qualk? What does that mean? Is that top 50? Is pretty good top 20? What is pretty good? Because since I strapped the helmet on and played for the Tigers, Clemson has been top seven every single year in Power Five, outside of one where they lost arguably the best defensive coordinator the game has ever seen, and they were top I think 15 that year. So pretty good seems like quite the understatement. They’re one of the best. But ‘they’ve got to get a quarterback.’ Cade Klubnik was the No. 1 quarterback in his class, so I guess that’s not good enough… The deal with it all is, one, it’s such an unnecessary random shot. I don’t understand it.”

Mac Lain pointed out that this is a preseason top-14 Clemson team Dinich was talking about – not a preseason top-five team – and he went on to defend Klubnik, who is entering his second full season as the Tigers’ starting quarterback in 2024.

“So the left hook out of nowhere, to me, is just crazy. But it’s something that, for whatever reason, certain people love to do, is take shots at this conference, take shots at Florida State, take shots at Clemson, things of that nature. And it’s remarkable to me, at the end of the day,” Mac Lain said.

“Quite frankly, if you look at the Clemson offense… I think you see improvement. I think you see a quarterback that is going into year two as a starter. We are so quick as a society to think, yep, this guy should come in and he should be an all-world competitor right away. It’s easy, right. That’s why everybody’s a five-star quarterback and comes in and does these things. No, man, there’s not a lot of those guys. There’s very few, and it’s extremely hard to do.”

“So for me, man, it’s just the randomness of it. But it worked,” Mac Lain added. “It got our attention, and we’re doing a radio show right now about it.”

ESPN’s Paul Finebaum appeared alongside Dinich on the Get Up segment Tuesday morning, and Finebaum named 10th-ranked Florida State as the top-10 team in the preseason AP Poll that will be unranked by the end of the season, with Finebaum calling FSU “all hype” and saying he doesn’t think the Seminoles will be “anywhere near that ranking.”

Mac Lain responded to Finebaum’s comment as well, saying “there’s never any type of real analysis” and “there’s never any type of real reason.”

“It’s just BS spewed out. It’s annoying,” Mac Lain said. “And again, sure, I’m biased. I get it. It’s my school, it’s my conference, it’s a school in my conference. But at the end of the day, you gotta get a little tired of it, right? The card that is played, and you’re just like, ‘What are we even talking about?’ But hey, it’s worked. Has a great career because of it, and yeah, congrats I guess.”

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