CLEMSON, S.C. – There’s a caravan headed down I-85 on Saturday morning. Folks maybe didn’t plan to make the journey together, but they’re set to make the pilgrimage all the same. Hand waves and friendly honks give way to bumper stickers, tiger tails on the back of trucks, and enough car flags to singlehandedly keep that industry alive. Nobody is driving under 80 miles an hour, and there isn’t a cop to be seen, presumably because all of them are already making extra money doing traffic for the game anyway.
It’s easy to get swept up in the tide and pulled right into Death Valley even if you didn’t know how to get there. There’s a gravitational pull to the place, with wayfinding as simple as a string of barbecue restaurants and a dab of orange all along the route. The only danger along the way is the massive traffic jam that springs up organically without warning every time a group of cars hiveminds the decision to stop at one of the shacks selling boiled peanuts by the side of the road.
This is the first game the Clemson Tigers are playing as the No. 1 team in the College Football Playoff rankings, which were released on Tuesday. And it couldn’t be a bigger one. While the ranking is new territory, the opponent is a familiar one – Florida State, the proverbial thorn in the Tiger’s paw, and the only thing still standing in the way of Clemson winning the Atlantic and earning a trip to Charlotte for the ACC Championship in the process.
This city doesn’t seem to have the infrastructure to house the amount of people making their way – with or without a ticket in hand – to Clemson Memorial Stadium. But like many other college towns, between some mixture of magic and a good old fashioned jimmy rig, Clemson puts on its Thanksgiving pants and stuffs itself silly without regret.
“With that number one ranking, you’ve got people coming out of the woodwork,” one fan says to his father at a tailgate near the Williams Family Gate about an hour before kickoff. And he’s not just talking about fans – there are whispers of up to 15 five-star recruits who are here.
As one longtime season ticket holder mentions, “A lot of kids starting calling to see if they could come to this game,” after the No. 1 ranking was announced.
The Seminoles had Clemson’s number in recent years, winning four of the last five meetings entering Saturday’s match-up, including that memorable game 51-14 in Death Valley two seasons ago in which the untouchable ‘Noles ripped out Clemson’s hearts on national television, politely ate said hearts in front of them after saying grace, and somehow managed to leave them with the check, mumbling something about being late for a show on the way out as Florida State grabbed its coat and headed for the door.
Clemson fans and ‘Noles faithful coexist surprisingly well before the game, with many sharing tents and facing off in flip cup, but make no mistake: When it comes to the game itself, these two groups don’t share an overwhelming affinity toward each other.
The guy I buy my ticket from has no problem dropping his price down when he sees how friendly I am, but he pulls his arm back right before I hand him the money.
“You ain’t a ‘Noles fan, are ya?” he asks. “Because I don’t sell to Florida State people.”
This is Jim, a 1984 Clemson grad who still lives in Easley. He used to sit in a corporate box at the stadium, but recently bought season tickets in the North Top Deck because, as he says, “these seats are a lot more fun; it’s better.” His extra ticket was supposed to go to his daughter, but she’s taking the SAT. Naturally, he’s hoping she’ll make the decision to go to his alma mater.
“I told her, my freshman year, they won the national championship and your freshman year, they will, too,” Jim says. “They were supposed to be a year away. Maybe they still are. Who knows…”
Jim’s freshman year at Clemson – 1980-81 – the Tigers won the National Championship, and fans who are old enough to remember it have a bit of a reputation for anthropomorphizing that season like a relative or a dead pet. This only gets deeper as more and more beers are emptied.
Nowhere is this feeling more prevalent than at Sloan Street Tap Room. Here you’ll find older grads posted up on game day drinking $1 Rolling Rocks, surrounded by trinkets, photos, and other reminders of the past. Sloan Street was opened in 1979 by Jimmy Howard, son of Frank Howard, the coach for whom the field – and Howard’s Rock – is named after. There’s a road sign on the wall near the bathroom that honors ‘The National Football Champions.” It notably neglects to mention the year.
There’s a disconnect between younger grads and the older generations, and it shows itself after Saturday’s game. Speak to anyone under 40, and you hear about how there was a nervousness even up through Wayne Gallman’s 25-yard touchdown run that put the Tigers up 10 with 2:34 to play.
A 25-year-old fan a few seats over in a checkered orange and white shirt tucked into jeans with LL Bean boots shakes his head and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand after the score. “I didn’t see that coming,” he says, before doing a private fist pump. “Let’s get them guts, baby. Let’s go!”
Talk to one of the gentlemen in orange at the bar, and you’ll hear something completely different.
“It’s hard to be humble when you’re number one,” one man in his 70s posted up on a stool at Sloan Street tells me following the 23-13 win. “Saying you’re young is the worst excuse. Every team is young. At some point, you either grow up or you don’t.”
This Clemson team has grown up faster than anyone expected them to, and suddenly that year away seems to have been transported to the present. Brent Venables’ defense improved dramatically over the first half of the season, giving more of a buffer for the offense to come into its own under new co-offensive coordinators Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott (after former offensive coordinator Chad Morris left to become the new SMU head coach). The Tigers have a star in quarterback Deshaun Watson, but even when he’s a bit off – as he was in the first half of the game against the Seminoles – they can weather the storm.
This is the culmination of everything Dabo Swinney has been building at Clemson, a foundation as solid as Howard’s Rock itself. And that’s why Swinney takes such offense to the word “Clemsoning,” a term that was coined a few years ago to explain the Tigers’ previous history of finding new ways to disappoint at the most inopportune times. That era of Clemson football has been buried deep underground, with thick concrete poured over the top. Like anything else in the past, it’s possible to still be haunted once in awhile, but the Tigers are refusing to let it consume them.
As one young student tells me, “There are two things you don’t joke about at Clemson – gathering at the Paw, and Clemsoning.”
And gather at the Paw, they did, pouring onto the field in droves. This is what you imagine the zombie apocalypse would look like in real life, with the Clemson football coaches and players acting as flesh. As fans spill into the streets, and these streets will be blocked with cars and people for hours, a mocking Seminole War Chant breaks out.
An older Clemson fan turns to his wife and says, “Now we get a few hours of drinking, smoking, and…” trailing off to let her or anyone else listening fill in the gap. He then winks at her.
One garnet and gold FSU polo and visor clad individual is taking it all in stride, and is holding a mostly-empty handle of Fireball. There’s no telling whether the progress on the bottle was an individual or a group effort. He congratulates each passing Clemson fan on a good game. At one point, he stops and looks down before meeting someone’s eye. There’s a noticeable smirk on his face.
“Now go win it all,” he says.
