Clemson and Texas won’t be so friendly with each other when the two teams face off in the first round of the 2024 College Football Playoff on Saturday.
However, one Tiger and one Longhorn have lots of history together, even going all the way back to elementary school.
Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik and Texas safety Michael Taaffe grew up together in Texas and even won two state titles together at Westlake High School in Austin in 2019 and 2020, per the Austin American-Statesman‘s Thomas Jones.
These two childhood friends will now vie with each other for a chance to contend for a national championship, even if they’re just meeting in the first round of a grander tournament.
“I’ve been playing with him since I was third or fourth grade,” Klubnik told the Austin American-Statesman. “Maybe he was on the first football team I was ever on, so (it’s) definitely exciting. I texted him last weekend, ‘This is going to be cool.'”
However, with Klubnik a quarterback and Taaffe a safety, they’ll quite literally be on the opposite side of the field come game day. Their shared experiences will become competitive advantages for each other.
“I know the tendencies that he has,” Taaffe told the Austin American-Statesman. “You know I’ll take those to my advantage, but vice-versa, he knows what type of player I am. He knows I like to take calculated risks. He knows that I’m a student of the game. He’s going to probably show me one thing that they’ve done on film 100 times, and it’s going to be the opposite. I know that, but he probably knows the same thing.”
Read more about Klubnik and Taaffe’s history over at the Austin American-Statesman.
