When Auburn and Clemson face off on Saturday night, every fan of college football can watch and dream.

College football’s caste system is strict and cruel, but upward mobility is possible. It’s rare. It’s not easy. It’s not always permanent.

But it happens.

Auburn and Clemson are proof, finally indulging their respective fan bases with a long-awaited ascension.

In college football, the weight of expectation is unevenly distributed, unforgiving and relentless.

For most of their existence, Auburn and Clemson have been in dire need of a spotter.

Among some in the college football media, a derogatory term quietly existed, citing both programs as the shining examples of campuses on which production consistently failed to keep pace with lofty expectations from the fan base: The Clemson/Auburn disease.

It gets coaches fired prematurely. It sentences anyone who wears the colors to a life of disappointment and an endless climb over a mountain that cannot be scaled.

(Author’s note: The entire SEC West suffers from this affliction. That even includes Alabama, where a season that ends without a national title is as welcome on campus as Mike Price.)

Not that those expectations in Clemson and Auburn were wholly unfair. Clemson tasted a national title in 1981 and won 10 games in four consecutive seasons from 1987-90. Then, it didn’t reach the double digits again until 2011, a span of 21 seasons and four different coaches.

Pat Dye brought four SEC titles to Auburn from 1983-89, and Terry Bowden went undefeated in 1993 while banned from the postseason and television for NCAA violations.

It won 10 games just once until 2004, when Tommy Tuberville employed Jason Campbell, Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown to go undefeated. That year, it won the SEC Championship Game for the first time and was still locked out of the BCS title game. That’s unfathomable in college football today, like a defensive player winning the Heisman: Theoretically possible, but every second spent legitimately discussing the odds is a second wasted.

The program won 10 games just once more over the next six seasons until winning won a national title with Gene Chizik as head coach, Gus Malzahn calling plays and Cam Newton running the offense. Chizik was fired two years later, but in 2013, Malzahn’s first year as head coach, the Tigers were right back in the title game, losing to Florida State in the final minute.

“This is a place you’ve got a chance to win the whole thing,” Malzahn said. “That’s what’s exciting about being the head coach here.”

That hasn’t always been the case. Until recently, it was an idea best described as idealistic more often than realistic.

Consistency has never been a descriptor that fit Auburn, but two BCS title game appearances in four seasons is rarified air. It is the stuff of blue bloods.

And yet, having Tuscaloosa cast a shadow upon you from 150 miles away inspires an angst and unrest best understood by Jeb Bush and Solange Knowles.

The Tigers have mostly spun their wheels in Saban’s shadow since reaching a second BCS title game in four years in 2013, but Clemson has been a model of consistency.

Dabo Swinney has won at least 10 games in each of the past six seasons, including a run of 28 wins in 30 games over the past two years, capped by upsetting Alabama for the national title in January.

Both Auburn and Clemson are among a select group that have interrupted Alabama’s dictatorship over the sport, respectively snatching SEC and national title trophies, away from the Crimson Tide. Auburn did it with an unforgettable comeback in 2010 and The Kick Six in 2013. Clemson narrowly fell short in 2015 before winning the 2016 title.

“The biggest thing and my No. 1 thing when I got the job, was creating the right mindset,” Swinney said. “It’s been a process over the past eight years in establishing the right culture and the type of consistency we want to have, but the one thing is just belief.”

Believing Clemson should routinely claim top five recruiting classes is the first step in making it happen. Signing top five recruiting classes with regularity turns you into a perennial national title contender, a status the Tigers enjoy today.

Swinney’s program has become one that can lose the entire defensive line, including Vic Beasley, from a 10-win team, but win the ACC and play for a national title the next year.

Swinney’s program has become one that can lose three more members of the defensive line, including Shaq Lawson, from an ACC champion and become national champion a year later, ranking fifth in defensive yards per play.

Swinney’s program has become one that can lose a two-time 1,000-yard rusher, a Heisman-caliber, first-round pick at quarterback and a first-round pick at receiver and still show up in the preseason top five.

“Having a vision for what it was supposed to look like. Being able to articulate that and create the buy-in from your players. Develop leadership. There’s so many things that go into it. Get the right people in place. And then just not grow weary. Stay at it. One day at a time, understanding you’re going to have success, you’re going to have failure,” Swinney said. “It’s all part of the journey. It doesn’t happen overnight. Just keep the main thing, the main thing and focus on the core values that were set forth in the program from Day 1 and what the vision was laid out to be. That’s what our focus has been, nothing has changed as we go into year 9 here.”

Clemson is upward mobility, the newest member of college football’s bluebloods. So is Auburn.

Two title game appearances in four years? Here’s the list of every program that’s done that in the BCS era: Oklahoma, Florida State, Ohio State, Miami, USC, Florida, Alabama.

And, of course, Clemson and Auburn.

The Clemson/Auburn disease? No program in the country would mind being infected with what’s run through those veins for most of the past decade.