"Louisiana Lightning" in A Bottle : Travis Etienne

By: Darby Childress

Unknown to National Star:

The small town of Jennings, Louisiana with a population of fewer than 10,000 people was home to what is now one of the biggest names in college football. While watching Clemson play Alabama in the 2018 National Championship, with his mother, Clemson football caught his eye after narrowly defeating the Crimson Tide. Etienne ran for 2459 yards his senior year of high school averaging 11.7 yards per carry and accounted for 35 touchdowns. An astounding 23 schools offered him scholarships including Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, and Texas A&M.

But what nobody expected was for this small-town kid to sign with Clemson University over his home state team of LSU. By the end of his freshman season at Clemson, Travis Etienne had become a household name after gaining 766 yards and 13 touchdowns. Since then he has only gotten better. Ed Orgeron had this to say about Travis signing with Clemson over LSU just before this year's national championship- “I know how it happened. And every time I watch Clemson play or every time I see him (Etienne) having success I’m sick to my stomach. Obviously, we like our running backs and we have great running backs here, but we wanted Travis Etienne at the end, but it was too little too late.”A statement he proved correct after beating Clemson's record for rushing yards in the loss against LSU by gaining 4,038 career rushing yards. Also becoming only the ninth player in the ACC to have 4,000 career rushing yards. In the 2019 season, he had 207 carries for 1614 yards averaging 7.8 yards per carry and 19 touchdowns. He has also won a National Championship as well as 3 ACC championships with Clemson, and this was only his junior season.

Though he once again shocked many after deciding to return to Clemson for his senior season rather than declaring for the NFL draft. In a post on Twitter, he said this-“I have long dreamed of competing at the highest level and getting a chance to compete in the NFL, but I’m not done dreaming here at Clemson either.” Which was a sigh of relief for Clemson fans everywhere knowing one of their stars was returning for one more year. But this raised a lot of eyebrows of both fans and experts all wondering if it was the right decision, by the Clemson running back, or a costly one. This is yet to be known but with the way this running back has been playing, I doubt that we will see anything less than excellence from Travis Etienne in his senior season and future NFL career. Mini Gallery of Travis Etienne: