Memorial Stadium, Clemson

Memorial Stadium, popularly known as "Death Valley" is home to the Clemson University Tigers NCAA Division I-A football team. Capacity is officially just over 81,000, though the record attendance was set in 1999 at 86,026. The stadium is one of the ten largest on-campus stadiums in the United States and is the largest in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Built in the 1940s, the stadium has been expanded throughout the years, and a future expansion of the west side of the stadium is scheduled to start in 2004.

Among the most interesting features of the stadium are the grassy hill on the east side of the stadium, a popular sitting area for Clemson students. At the top of the hill lies "Howard's Rock", which is an imported rock from Death Valley, California that was presented to legendary Clemson coach Frank Howard in 1967. The Tigers' traditional team entrance involves each player rubbing the rock for magical powers and then running down the hill, a procession that has been termed "the most exciting 25 seconds in college football."

The term "Death Valley" comes from the fact that the field is physically situated in a valley. Two additional facts add to the mystique. First, the university cemetery sits on a hill that once overlooked the field before the upper decks were constructed. The other reference comes from a former Presbyterian College coach who complained that playing his teams in Clemson would be similar to entering Death Valley (California).

Before the Tigers played in Memorial Stadium, games were originally played on Bowman Field and later moved to Riggs Field, now home to Clemson's soccer teams.

Memorial Stadium was also the original home field for the Carolina Panthers of the NFL. When the Panthers played their inaugural season in 1995, their permanent stadium in Charlotte was still under construction; the team played its entire home schedule in Clemson. The arrangement ended with the opening of Ericsson Stadium, now Bank of America Stadium, at the start of the 1996 season.

Clemson Memorial Stadium has been held in high esteem for many years. Whether it be players from the 1940s and 1950s, opposing players from the 1970s and 1980s, or even professional players in the 1990s, the ambiance of this special setting helps define college football. In 1999 the storied edifice added to its legend when the first meeting of father and son head coaches (Bowden Bowl I) took place before a sellout crowd of over 86,000 fans.

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, various publications have named top 10 stadiums in college football and Clemson Memorial Stadium, affectionately known as "Death Valley," has been a common denominator on those lists.

The facility's mystique is derived from its many traditions, which date to its opening in 1942, the legendary games and players, and Clemson's corresponding rate of success. Clemson has won an even 200 games in the previous 57 years there (200-78-7) and has won over 70 percent of the contests. Twenty-eight times since 1983, crowds have exceeded 80,000.

History

The stadium has certainly been beneficial to the Tigers who call it home, but the stadium was constructed against the advice of at least one Clemson coach. Just before head coach Jess Neely left for Rice University after the 1939 season, he gave Clemson a message. "Don't ever let them talk you into building a big stadium," he said. "Put about 10,000 seats behind the Y.M.C.A. That's all you'll ever need".

Instead of following Coach Neely's advice, however, Clemson officials decided to build the new stadium in a valley on the western part of campus. The place would take some clearing-there were many trees, but luckily there were no hedges.

The crews went to work: clearing, cutting, pouring, and forming. Finally, on September 19, 1942, Clemson Memorial Stadium opened with the Tiger football team crushing Presbyterian College, 32-13. Those 20,000 seats installed for Opening Day would soon grow enormously in number. When the original part of the stadium was built in the early 1940's, much of the work was done by scholarship athletes, including many football players. The first staking out of the stadium was done by two members of the football team, A.N. Cameron and Hugh Webb. Webb returned to Clemson years later to be an architecture professor, and Cameron went on to become a civil engineer in Louisiana.

The building of the stadium did not proceed without a few problems. One day during the clearing of the land, one young football player proudly announced that he was not allergic to poison oak. He then commenced to attack the poison oak with a swing blade, throwing the plants to and fro. The next day, however, the boy was swollen twice his size and had to be put in the hospital.

There are many other stories about the stadium including one stating that Frank Howard put a chew of tobacco in each corner of the stadium as the concrete poured.

Howard says that the seeding of the grass caused a few problems. "About 40 people and I laid sod on the field," he says. "After three weeks, on July 15, we had only gotten halfway through.

"I told them that it had taken us three weeks to get that far, and I would give them three more week's pay for however long it took. I also told them we would have 50 gallons of ice cream when we got through. After that it took them three days to do the rest of the field. Then we sat down in the middle of the field and ate up that whole 50 gallons."

Howard says that on the day of the first game in the stadium,"the gates were hung at 1:00 pm and we played at 2:00 pm." But that would be all of the construction for a while. Then in 1958, 18,000 sideline seats were added and, in 1960, a total of 5,658 West end zone seats were added in response to increasing attendance. With the large end zone,"Green Grass" section, this expansion increased capacity to about 53,000.

Later, upper decks were added to each side of the stadium as crowds swelled-the first one in 1978 and the second in 1983. This increased capacity to over 80,000 which makes it one of the 10 largest on-campus stadiums in the country.

The effect inflation has had in this century can be seen in the dramatic differences in stadium construction costs. The original part of the stadium was built at a cost of $125,000 or at $6.25 a seat. The newest upper deck was finished in 1983 at a cost of $13.5 million, or $866 a seat.

Through the years, Memorial Stadium has become known as "Death Valley." It was tagged this by the late Presbyterian coach, Lonnie McMillan. After bringing his P.C. teams to Clemson for years and being soundly beaten, McMillan said the place was like Death Valley. A few years later the name stuck.

On November 16, 1974, the playing surface was named Frank Howard Field for the legendary coach because of his long service and dedication to the University.

Luckily, the stadium wasn't built behind the Y.M.C.A.

Running Down the Hill

What has been described as "the most exciting 25 seconds in college football from a color and pageantry standpoint," actually started out as a matter-of-fact entrance, mainly because of necessity.

The first 20,000 seats in Clemson Memorial Stadium were built and ready for use before the 1942 season. Less than a year before Pearl Harbor had been bombed and the United States was at war.

The shortest entry into the stadium was a walk down Williamson Road from Fike Field House's dressing rooms to a gate at the top of the hill behind the east end zone. There were no dressing facilities in the west end zone-only a big clock where the hands turned, and a scoreboard which was operated by hand.

The team would dress at Fike, walk down Williamson Road, come in the gate underneath where the big scoreboard now stands and jog down the hill for its warmup exercises. There was no fanfare, no cannon shot fired, no tiger paw flag, no Tiger Rag played–just the team making its entrance and lining up to do the side straddle hop.

That is by and large the way things went for the next 25 years.

Howard's Rock

Either in 1964 or 1965, S.C. Jones, a member of the Clemson class of 1919, made a trip to California. He stopped at a spot in Death Valley, CA, and picked up this white flint rock. He presented it to Coach Frank Howard as being from Death Valley, CA, to Death Valley South Carolina.

The rock lay on the floor in Howard's office in Fike for a year or more. One day Howard was cleaning up his office and he told Gene Willimon, who was the executive secretary of IPTAY, to, "take this rock and throw it over the fence or out in the ditch–do something with it, but get it out of my office."

Willimon didn't think that was the way a rock should be treated. After all, it had been brought 3000 miles by a very sincere Tiger fan.

By the mid-sixties, Memorial Stadium was pretty well living up to its moniker, Death Valley, because of the number of victories that had been recorded there. Actually, the name was first used by the late head coach Lonnie McMillian, head coach at Presbyterian College in Clinton in the 1940's.

McMillian and the other Blue Hose coaches before him used to open the season each year by coming to Clemson. Seldom scoring (24 shut outs in 39 games) and with only three wins and four ties to show for it, his teams were being thoroughly defeated by the Tigers regularly. In 1948 McMillian made the comment to the press that he was taking his team to play Clemson in Death Valley.

An occasional reference to Memorial stadium by that name could be heard for the next three or four years, but when Howard started calling it 'Death Valley' in the 1950's, the name took off like wildfire. The Tigers celebrated the 50th season in the "valley"' in 1991.

But getting back to Howard's rock.

The rock was mounted on a pedestal at the top of the hill. It was unveiled September 24, 1966, on a day when Clemson played Virginia. The Tigers were down 18 points with 17 minutes to play and came back to win (40-35) on a 65-yard pass play from Jimmy Addison to Jacky Jackson in the fourth period. That was quite a spectacular debut for that rock.

The team members started rubbing the rock prior to running down the hill September 23, 1967, a day when Clemson defeated Wake Forest, 23-6. Prior to running down the hill that day, Howard told his players: "If you're going to give me 110 percent, you can rub that rock. If you're not, keep your filthy hands off it." Howard told of the incident the next day on his Sunday television show and the story became legend. When Hootie Ingram succeeded Howard as head coach prior to the 1970 season, Ingram decided that the team would make its final entrance on the field out of the dressing room in the west end zone. In all home games in 1970 and 1971 and the first four of 1972 when the Tigers did not run down the hill, their record was 6-9. The team decided it wanted to come down the hill once prior to the South Carolina game in 1972. The result, in a cold, freezing rain, was a 7-6 victory when Jimmy Williamson knocked down a two-point conversion attempt which preserved the win.

The Tigers have made the entrance for every home game since 1942, except for the seasons mentioned above - 243 times heading into the 1995 season.

After Clemson's final warm-up, the team goes back into its dressing room under the west stands for final game instructions. About 10 minutes before kickoff the team boards two buses rides around behind the north stands to,the east end zone and debarks to the top of the hill behind Howard's Rock.

At the appointed time, the cannon booms and led by a high-flying tiger paw flag, the band forms two lines for the team to run between and strikes up 'Tiger Rag' and the frenzy starts in all sincerity–and usually lasts two and a half to three hours.

It is a tradition that has inspired Clemson players for many years.

"When you get to the bottom, its like you're in a hole and all around you are nothing but Clemson fans. It's like the crowd is one big voice. You feel like little kings," said Tiger tailback Rodney Blunt.

David Treadwell, a 1987 All-American placekicker for Clemson said, "Clemson's record at home is not a coincidence. Running down the hill is a part of that record. You get so inspired, and so much of college football is about emotion. You get out of that bus and you hear the roar of the crowd and it gives you chills up and down your spine.

"Running down the hill is still talked about everywhere I go," said Jerry Butler, an All-American on the 1978 team who went on to a lengthy pro career with the Buffalo Bills. "Players who played against Clemson when I was in college always remember us rubbing that rock and thinking we would gain some type of spirit coming down that hill. The adrenaline rush was unbelievable for a Clemson player and it was quite a shock for the opponent."

Quotes about Death Valley:

"Death Valley really lives up to its image. I was impressed with this stadium. When you put 80,000 people in there, it really feels like they are on top of you. I would hate to be Georgia Tech or whoever else comes in here." --San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Steve Young

"Everything just seems like a hushed roar. Thats all you hear. You really cant hear anybody standing next to you. You just have to shake your head and pretend like you heard what they said. I think its just the mystique of Clemson and seeing the guys coming off the hilltop and the way the stadium is shaped." --North Carolina All-American Marcus Jones

"There is no place louder or picturesque than Death Valley. There, where Clemson folks see magic in a hill and a rock, orange gets more respect than anywhere this side of Gainesville, FL." --Terence Moore, Atlanta Constitution

"I remember being nervous before the game because there were 80,000 people dressed in orange. It's intimidating. I even threw up before the game. It's the only time I've ever done that." --Former Duke Quarterback Dave Brown

"When Clemson players rub that rock and run down the hill, it's the most exciting 25 seconds in college football. " --Brent Musberger, ABC Sports

"I came here knowing it would be loud and that Clemson would hit me hard, but to me, the noise was the biggest factor. I know I didn't concentrate as well because of it." --Herschel Walker after Clemson's 13-3 victory in 1981, his only regular season loss at Georgia.

"When you get to the bottom its like you're in a hole and all around you are nothing but Clemson fans. Its like the crowd is one big voice. You feel like little kings." --Former Clemson running back Rodney Blunt

"Clemson's record at home is not a coincidence. Running down the hill is a part of that record. You get so inspired, and so much of college football is about emotion. You get out of that bus and youhear the roar of the crowd and it gives up chills up and down your spine." --Former Clemson All-America kicker David Treadwell

"The rock has strange powers. When you rub it, and run down the hill, the adrenaline flows. It's the most emotional experience I've ever had." --Five-time All-Pro and former Clemson All-American Michael Dean Perry

"Running down the hill is still talked about everywhere I go. Players who played against Clemson when I was in college remember us running the hill and thinking we would gain some type of spirit. The adrenaline rush was unbelievable for a Clemson player and quite a shock for the opponent." --Former Clemson All-American Jerry Butler