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Kenny Fey

Clemson's Brandon Maye (20) talks with Daniel Andrews during a break in practice earlier this month at the Tigers' practice fields behind the Jervey Athletic Center in Clemson

CLEMSON — Clemson middle linebacker Brandon Maye has been trying to bottle up his excitement for this Saturday’s Chick-fil-A College Kickoff against No. 24 Alabama for weeks.

“It has hit me for about the last month,” he said. “I dream about it every night. But I really have tried to stay away from it until this Friday and then Saturday I will let loose.”

A native of Mobile, Ala., Maye has been waiting for this game with great enthusiasm ever since the matchup was announced in January. It was hard for the 6-foot-2, 225-pound linebacker to watch the Tigers’ 23-20 overtime defeat to Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Bowl from the sideline. At the time, he was at the end of his redshirt season.

“I’m very excited about it,” Maye said. “Right now, I’m trying to hold all of my emotions together and save it for Saturday night at 8 o’clock. I’m overjoyed. I really thank God for this blessing and being able to come out and just perform.”

For a while there was doubt Maye was going to get the chance to perform in Saturday’s game for ninth-ranked Clemson. He has been in an intense battle for the starting spot at middle linebacker with senior Josh Miller and true freshman Stanley Hunter since camp opened up. But earlier this week, Clemson defensive coordinator Vic Koenning confirmed Maye had earned the starting job for linebackers coach David Blackwell.

“They had a really good competition, but after awhile, you have to cut off the competition and say, ‘Hey, you are the guy,’” Koenning said. “You notice there are a lot of NFL teams doing that right now and I think Brandon, in Coach Blackwell’s eyes, deserved it.

“But it’s still a good competition. If he doesn’t perform as expected we have to have an answer.”

Maye is very much aware of that and is going to do all he can to make the most of his opportunity.

“I think the coaches knew what they were doing. They made it an open competition and they wanted me to come with my ‘A’ game every day,” he said. “Basically, that competition has shown me that if I make a mistake those two guys behind me are going to be in the game. It has really helped me focus more on making plays and being everywhere.”

It doesn’t hurt either that he is playing against a team he grew up to hate and was later scorned by in the recruiting process.

“Growing up in the state of Alabama, like it is here, it’s either going to be Auburn or Alabama,” Maye said. “Growing up, I pulled for Auburn. Most of my family liked Auburn.”

And he hoped to one day play for Auburn. At Davidson High School in Mobile, it appeared he was going to play at least for one of the in-state schools after earning Max Emfinger All-American honors, being an Alabama-Mississippi All-Star and being a first-team all-region selection his senior year. In that campaign, he recorded 120 tackles from his middle linebacker spot, including 18 tackles for a loss and five sacks. He also had two interceptions and recovered five fumbles.

It’s definitely easy to say that he was all over the place. But neither Alabama nor Auburn noticed him. Auburn eventually offered late, but the Crimson Tide never called.

“I actually got a couple of questionnaires from (Alabama), and I went down to their camp,” he said. “When I went to camp, I took my tape down with me and I called them on the way home and they said they were going to give me a call back, but they never did call back.

“It probably had something to do with their change in staff or something like that, but they never did give me a call back.”

And that stuck with Maye, who eventually had offers from Memphis and South Carolina taken from him as well. But it’s what Alabama did that has stayed with him, and now he is just anxious to see how he and the unit’s two other new starters – Scotty Cooper at strongside and Kavell Conner at weakside – will perform with the whole college football world watching.

“I’m just going to come out and keep practicing hard and make sure that I’m ready to go both mentally and physically,” Maye said. “I trust Coach Vic and Coach Blackwell. I feel that they have really prepared themselves to help us be prepared to face those guys.

“With the (Alabama) freshmen coming in, I think they will try to do something different. They will probably change their approach and probably run a couple of different plays, but I think we are ready.”

Maye has been ready for the last eight months.

“I’m excited right now. I’m overjoyed,” the redshirt freshman said. “Being in front of 75,000, it is going to leave me speechless. Let’s just put it like that.

“I’m going to come out there and play my game, and really try not to pay too much attention to the crowd and just focus on what we have to do.”