It’s just one game.

Right?

That’s the exact message Clemson coach Tommy Bowden and his players have tried to send all week in the wake of tonight’s 8 p.m. Georgia Dome clash with Alabama, the Tigers’ most hyped season opener in recent memory.

Win or lose, come Sunday morning, the two sides will go their separate ways — No. 9 Clemson back to the ACC, No. 24 Alabama back to the SEC. A loss doesn’t affect Clemson’s hopes of its first ACC title since 1991 one iota, and a win won’t provide any cushion should the Tigers stumble against Wake Forest or Florida State.

That said, is tonight important? For overall psyche? For national perception? For a huge step into 2008 in the right direction?

You’d better believe it.

“Everybody’s going to be watching this game on prime time TV (a split-national ABC telecast), watching us, looking to us, seeing if we are for real,” said Clemson quarterback Cullen Harper. “I think it’s important that we go out and make that statement.”

Tonight’s game, one of only two opening-week face-offs between Associated Press top 25 teams (Missouri-Illinois is the other), is a litmus test for how Clemson handles the tremendous hype which has been building since mid-January, when Atlanta-area stars James Davis and Aaron Kelly said they’d return for their senior seasons.

How will the Tigers — with an offense full of talented skill players and a stingy, veteran defense — handle being the hunted instead of the hunter?

“What we’ve challenged our team to do is see if (the hype) creates a sense of urgency where you want to defend that ranking,” Bowden said. “That’s something we’ve never had to do.

“(Alabama wants) what we’ve got. We’d rather have (No.) 9 than 25, and they’d rather have No. 9 than 25. We’ve never been in a position where we have something they want. It’s usually the other way around.”

Clemson has struggled with national perception under Bowden largely because the successes and hype are often met with a loss of head-shaking quality. In 2005, the Tigers followed an overtime upset at No.11 Miami with a 16-13 loss at lowly Duke, still the Blue Devils’ last ACC victory.

And each of the past three seasons, the Tigers have finished one win short of an ACC title game berth, with tight losses to Boston College the culprit each time. Last season, Clemson led BC 17-13 with under two minutes left and a title game berth on the line before quarterback Matt Ryan uncorked a 47-yard touchdown pass that lifted the Eagles to a 20-17 victory.

The pressure is on Bowden to lift Clemson towards an ACC title this year, thanks to its loaded roster, and tonight is the first chance to prove he has a team worthy of its preseason stature.

“We have goals of winning the ACC championship, and this game has no relative importance to that at all,” Harper said. “At the same time we want to put Clemson on the map and let people know we’re legit and we’re serious.”

It is also a chance to build stature against an SEC foe.

Since 2003, Clemson is 6-4 against SEC foes, but five of those wins have come against in-state rival South Carolina. The program’s last win against an SEC team other than the Gamecocks was a 27-14 Peach Bowl victory over Tennessee following the 2003 season — a game played in the very same Georgia Dome. Tonight, the Tigers will carry a much fresher Dome memory, thanks to a 23-20 overtime loss to Auburn in 2007’s Chick-fil-A Bowl.

“I think it’s very important,” said Davis, an Atlanta native who is 0-3 as a collegian in his hometown. “Anytime you get a chance to play an SEC school, you want to come out on top because everybody sees the SEC as being the toughest conference. I think this gives you a chance to say you’re a top team like those guys. You get to prove yourself against them.”

It also adds cache to a top 10 national ranking, the program’s highest preseason mark since 1991.

“(Preseason rank) is kind of like playing Monopoly,” Bowden said. “You’ve got a big stack of that Monopoly money, but it really don’t mean anything. You can’t go spend it. This is the same thing with a preseason ranking. It doesn’t mean much other than that you had a good season last year.”

Tonight, the Tigers take the first step towards turning that funny money into national respect.

Is winning an all-or-nothing proposition? Probably not. But it sure makes the next few weeks easier.

“It’s a 12 game schedule, and when you talk to the team, you have to keep that in perspective whether you win or lose,” Bowden said. “One game is not very significant if you win or lose. LSU proved that last year with two losses and winning a national championship. Monday’s meeting with the team (after the game) will be awfully important. Is it easier to practice after a win than a loss? Yes. So in that regard it makes winning important.”