In case you had the TV off last Saturday (or had switched from ESPN to CBS to watch Fedor Emelianenko rock Brett Rogers‘ face off), Clemson took down FSU in a 40-24 slugfest that was much closer than the score indicated.

(It’s like he’s trying to open the helmet like a Christmas present.)

It was also more violent than the score indicated - which seems to be more of a shortcoming of today’s scorekeeping than anything, but we digress - and as the picture would show, someone got a little eye-gougey. It’s Clemson’s Andre Branch, getting a fistful of FSU’s David Spurlock’s face. Video, of course, is after the break.

As you might imagine, fans on opposite sides of this game have two very divergent opinions of the play. From TOMAHAWK NATION:

Andre Branch (#40) grabs #79 (David Spurlock) by the helmet, snaps his neck back, holds his head and sticks his fingers into Spurlock’s facemask, an obvious eye gouge. Then Branch gets up, talks trash to the justifiably angry Spurlock, points to the sky, and dances around. Spurlock shows a ton of restraint by not going after Branch for this classless cheap shot.

The ACC should take action and suspend this “athlete.” Someone is going to lose their sight as a result of these cowardly and completely non-football related acts. I wonder what Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney thinks of this? I wonder what the ACC office thinks about this?

Aaaand from the Clemson partisans at BLOCK-C:

FSU FANS, PLEASE STOP BEING BABIES

That wasn’t eye gouging though. He may have tried, but it didn’t happen. He was definitely ripping at his neck, but that’s very common for a fumble scrum. Football is a mean, nasty game. And guess what? To play it at that level, you have to be a mean and nasty person to get by. Branch is a mean and nasty person. So is Spurlock. They wouldn’t be starting if they both weren’t this caliber of player.

You wanna know what’s classless FSU? Bringing that garbage performance into Clemson, then getting pissy because you fell apart down the back stretch. Oh that and naming just about everything in Tallahassee after Bobby Bowden and then not coming up with a better end plan than the one you have. If the guy were a horse, he’d be in an Elmer’s bottle by now with the way you people treat him.

We skipped a lot of the Clemson article, but rest assured it was of the same tone the entire way through.

We imagine the ACC’s going to be giving Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney a call soon - if they haven’t already - with an earnest interest in Branch’s eligibility for next week’s game against North Carolina State.