The Summer Remains
This is a story of place, people, and heat. As Clemson launch their home schedule on Saturday against Charleston Southern, this is a retelling of a trip taken in 2019 to a town like few others.
They come from everywhere this orange swarm. From Cherokee in the north, to Hobby on the Georgia state line in the east, and from Jasper and Beaufort and Ridgeland in the south to McCormick in the west. They come from everywhere to descend on the small town of Clemson, population 13,905. Or roughly equated: a fifth of the capacity of Memorial Stadium, home to college football’s national champion Tigers. They come on Thursdays and Fridays and Saturday mornings in their cars and their trucks and their Winnebago’s, blocking the roads for miles around, each vehicle adorned with bumper stickers and Tiger paws and odes to Dabo and Trevor and Travis. It’s not easy to get to this part of South Carolina at the best of times. The freeways that bring you down from Chicago through Indianapolis and Lexington and Knoxville have melted away. In their place are a series of two-lane highways that twist and turn their way through the Blue Ridge Mountains. On a Saturday morning in autumn it feels as if the entire world is being drawn to this town. Never has the term, ‘all roads lead here’ felt more apposite.
The city is defined almost entirely by the university that was built in the late 1800’s atop Fort Hill Plantation. Prior to the Revolutionary War the land here was first called Esseneca and then Calhoun after the famous democratic statesman and seventh Vice-President of the United States, John C. Calhoun, until renamed Clemson in 1943. There are few reminders of the struggle of resistance and resilience shown by those enslaved here, but Clemson is surely one of the whitest places you’ll ever visit. On many levels it’s cult-like.
In the spacious press box where the only thing protecting the journalists from the paying public is a balcony, and the warm air flows in where floor to ceiling windows once were, a scribe from one of the South Carolina newspapers is telling a story gleaned from the pages of a recent edition of Sports Illustrated. It’s a tale that starts at the culmination of practice in August of 2012 and ends with the baptism of star receiver DeAndre Hopkins on the field, carried out by his head coach. It shouldn’t be a surprise that in the God fearing south at the institution that Dabo Swinney reclaimed, where the coaches are Christian, and faith is used as a recruiting tool that this sort of thing takes place. It’s a cliché to say that football is a religion in these parts, but it’s only a cliché because it’s true. Stalk the parking lots and the tailgates around the beautiful stadium and it’s clear how important faith and football are. One t-shirt says “God, Sweet Tea, and the ACC”. If religion is a cult then we’re at the alter and the worshippers are here for footballing absolution, delivered to them by their own Jesus figure of a quarterback, Trevor Lawrence.
The early slate of games is already underway when we step from the car and make the short walk to Death Valley, a nickname given to the stadium in 1948. The road, lined with sycamores and Silva cell frames is packed with fans of all ages, and there is the low hum of generators powering up satellite dishes for crystal clear HD coverage of the midday kick-offs at almost every spot. The grills and the smokers are working overtime, much as they are across college football’s south-east on a Saturday, and the smells are bold and overpowering. Mimosas are being drunk, mostly from orange cups. Everywhere you look there are games of Cornhole and ladder golf taking place.
The amphitheatre itself that suddenly appears below you out of the tailgate smoke on the cambering pathway is dramatic enough to take your breath away. Legend has it that it was almost never built: Former Tigers coach Jess Neely told the school they had no need for a big stadium. “Don’t ever let them talk you into building it,” he said. “Put 10,000 seats behind the YMCA. That’s all you’ll ever need.” The closer you get, the more you see the field that sinks away beneath you. Your feet are level with the top of the goalposts and the view below you is mesmerising. Officially this place is called Memorial Stadium, but to the patrons who flock here every week it is only ever Death Valley. Named after the location of the school’s cemetery on the hill that once overlooked the field, for Clemson fans it’s the original, no matter what those who follow LSU have to say on the matter.
The crowd is swelling now as the sun beats down. It is unrelenting. A heat that’s both stifling and oppressive. It’s hard enough to stand still in it. The simple task of breathing can bring beads of sweat to the temples. The contemplation of athletic endeavour is enough to soak your shirt for it is that type of shine. A woman in a hat with a foot-high National Championship ring on top of it walks past us. The crown lays heavy and her hair is damp and matted but she’s shaded at least. All around us there are men, women and children in Lawrence and Deshaun Watson jerseys. They are everywhere. Time is almost upon us. Church is in session.
But before worship can begin there are the rituals. It’s Tiger Walk time.
It is not The Grove at Ole Miss. There are no chants of ‘Hotty Toddy’, there’s no history such as there is over in Oxford where the ‘Walk of Champions’ through as many as 100,000 Rebels bedecked in their Sunday best dates back forty years or more. This is a relatively new thing, introduced by Swinney for his first game back in 2008 and repeated at every home game since. It affords the fans who line the P3 parking lot the chance to come together and form a tunnel for the coach and his players to walk through. Spaces at the front are hard to come by. To secure one you must stand in the heat for an hour or more. It’s the dilemma amongst fans who pack the lot: chance your arm at a high five from Lawrence and maybe get a hug from Swinney, but melt in the unrelenting sunshine. We get lucky – we bunch in at the front next to a pair of teenage lovers. And unlucky - because the team are delayed, so the sun powers down making everything incredibly uncomfortable. Sweat has formed in tiny globules on the face of the woman in front of us and her make-up runs. She turns, and a single bead of moisture rolls from the curve of her neck all the way down her back. The bottle of water in my hand which was ice cold less than an hour ago is now warm enough to take a tea-bag. Veteran Tiger Walkers have umbrellas. Local geniuses sit atop their cars under brollies, afforded the best of both worlds: protection from the sun and an unrivalled view.
Today’s opponents, 12th ranked Texas A+M are booed as their buses arrive. Whether they’re drawing the ire of the fans for being there or for delaying the Tigers is never quite clear. Finally, Swinney appears through the crowd like a shaman leading his disciples. Hands reach out to touch him. He’s hugging people: parents, brothers and sisters, boys and girls. He kisses babies. He’s a God in these parts. Two national championships in four years will do that for you. It’s cliché all over again. It’s also true. One by one his men walk past, all suited and booted despite the temperature. Lawrence looks bigger and taller than when we’ve seen him up close before. We’re a long way from Cartersville now, Dorothy.
The biggest cheers are reserved for the wide receivers. All sockless and fashionably shoe’d: first Tee Higgins, then Justyn Ross and Amari Rodgers. Freshman 5-star sensation Frank Ladson Jr. can’t quite believe his eyes as he encounters his first Tiger Walk. Still the sun beats down.
We watch warm-ups from the sideline up close and personal. The receiver group flex in front of the bleachers. One of the coaches throws beautiful spirals from the forty to the goal line. Every ball is in stride. There are no drops. The tight-ends run routes and block each other. Lawrence makes one handed catches. The national champions are ready for their first test since Santa Clara.
As kick-off approaches, the noise level increases. By the time the players are ready for what the school call, “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” when players and coaches led by an excitable Swinney run down the hill from Howards Rock to the field below, it’s a frenzy. The noise is akin to anything you’ll hear in the SEC, topped perhaps only by the cowbells of Starkville. It started by accident and necessity back in the 1940’s. The stadium was still being built an hour before kick-off when the Tigers played their first ever game in Death Valley. “The thing I remember most,” said Clemson coach Frank Howard, “was that we hung the gates at 1pm and played at 2. We barely finished the damn thing in time to have a game.” Because of the building work the hill entrance was the closest to the field so Howard took his players down it, and arguably college football’s greatest tradition was born. There is no pomp or ceremony to it. It’s nothing more than 120 men and women running down a hill to an artificial field. Yet its impact is cataclysmic.
Death Valley shudders with anticipation as the crowd scream out each letter of the word ‘CLEMSON’ one after another. The volume is ear splitting.
The game itself isn’t much of a contest. After some cautious early exchanges, the Tigers pull away. Lawrence isn’t brilliant, but he makes enough plays to ease past the Aggies. There are three or four unmistakeable wow throws, including a touchdown pass to Justyn Ross that has the press box gasping as he rolls to his left and throws back against his body with effortless touch. Later he back-shoulders Tee Higgins down at the goal-line with a laser from 25 yards away, putting it in the only place it could be caught. The sixty or so scouts and NFL personnel around us look at each other. Some shake their heads. A pair of evaluators from rival NFC teams exchange a glance that says, “Imagine drafting him”.
There’s a late consolation score for A+M but it matters not. The Tigers have stolen Jimbo Fisher’s SEC dreams in the unrelenting heat of a South Carolina fall. The student section rushes the field as the clock hits double zeroes. In the concourses the overhead fans spray fine mist onto the patrons as they head for their cars or the post-game tailgates. It’s still well above 90 degrees. The air is thick.
Texas/LSU is just beginning on ESPN so people throng round their televisions in their post game tailgates to watch Tiger transfer Joe Burrow win a barnburner. Silver dinner sets are brought out and some of the gazebos resemble upmarket restaurants, packed full of happy, orange clad diners. Cornhole has been replaced by conversation and talk once again turns to January and whether Clemson can repeat in the Superdome and win another national title. In the distance, ‘Where the Blue Ridge Yawns its Greatness’ is being sung. As the traffic melts towards Highway 75, a truck drives past with 15 or 20 students piled impossibly into the back. One holds a 40-inch television with a feed of the game playing. A girl tells her friends that should she get arrested, she has bail money in her back pocket.
It’s that kind of town.