Column: Tradition-rich school breeds Southern hospitality

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CLEMSON,S.C.-"It's about pride."

If you ask just about any Clemson student, administrator, alumnus, fan - or even the dogs they dress up in orange every Saturday afternoon - that's likely what they'll say Clemson is all about.

Sure there are variations. Some say it's Clemson pride. Others Tiger pride. But whatever you call it, there's a lot of it.

And it's more than just talk.

Small town feel, big time football

Despite the 990 miles between Boston and Clemson, S.C. - not to mention a 494 to 1 population ratio - there are a few similarities between BC and its new conference mate down south.

To start, at every football game, the student sections wear shirts with their respective team colors shining brightly - gold for the Eagles, orange for the Tigers.

But Clemson magnifies it a bit ... by about 80,000 people. At Municipal Stadium, it's not just the students that show their spirit, it's practically a sin for anyone to wear anything but orange. You're just as likely to see a pink Boston College sweatshirt as you are maroon or gold in Alumni.

And Clemson has its own "on-campus" graveyard, just like us. But along with a few corpses, most of the epitaphs are on tombstones that memorialize each of the top 25 teams that have visited Death Valley and taken the stadium's name literally - the Tigers will have to wait to put up a grave for BC.

And most impressively, both schools take their tailgating very seriously. Both groups of fans will show up around 9:30 a.m. to tailgate for the game - only the Clemson faithful will show up that early for a night game. Close to 120,000 people turn the campus into one big parking lot every Saturday in the fall, and only about 85,000 actually get into the stadium.

There's one thing Clemson, S.C. has over Boston: a logical tailgating policy.

Tradition-filled atmosphere

If there's one thing schools throughout the ACC do well - and one area BC could improve on - it's traditions. Southern culture is obviously a tradition-rich society, and that spills over into football.

As exciting as it may be when the BC team makes its sprint into Alumni Stadium before every game, when compared to the entrance the Tigers make - famously called "the most exciting 25 seconds in college football" - it's like trying to compare McElroy fried chicken to the deep-fried southern chicken served up at every tailgate at Clemson.

And it doesn't disappoint.

Just before kickoff, buses take the players from the locker rooms on the west end of the stadium to a gate above the east end zone - Clemson has one of the few stadiums in the country that runs east-west.

The crowd builds into a slow roar as they rise to await the spectacle about to unfold. All the players huddle at the top of "the hill" around Howard's Rock, which was brought back from Death Valley, Calif., and start getting all riled up. After a cannon shot erupts, "The Tiger" (yes, that's the name of their mascot) leads the team in a sprint down a steep hill right in the middle of the student section and onto the field.

Needless to say, it's a goose bump inducing sight, even for a visiting fan.

Life or Death Valley

The story goes that former Presbyterian College coach Lonnie McMillan once told reporters that he was going to play Clemson at "Death Valley" because his team always got killed there.

The name caught on when fabled coach Frank Howard, who had visited Death Valley, Calif. (see "the Rock" above) started referring to the stadium by this intimidating moniker.

An "inviting" sign on the top bowl of the stadium makes sure you feel at home in the high heat and noise of the stadium: "Clemson Welcomes You to Death Valley."

Which is fitting, because Clemson football is a life or death devotion.

Some northeasterners might snobbishly retort that "heck, there in the middle of nowhere, it's all they've got." True, the nearest major city is in another state: Atlanta, over two hours away. But when you see the devotion they have to their team, there's little emotion any outsider can feel other than respect.

And they show their devotion in plenty of ways. At the start and end of every game, win or loss, everyone in the stands sings along with not only the fight song, Tiger Rag - you've probably heard it on your NCAA Xbox game - but also the Alma Mater.

I'll buy a dessert from the Chocolate Bar for the first student who can even recite BC's Alma Mater to me from memory.

And they don't stop using their voices then, and the next day few of the fans even have voices to use. In Alumni, where the 44,500 seating capacity is a seminar class compared to the lecture hall sized stadiums in the ACC, everyone knows that the cheering section is actually even less, limited to the 8,000 students in attendance and a few dedicated alums.

At Clemson, everyone stands and cheers. Sitting on third down when the other team has the ball is practically reason enough for ejection from the stadium, and overtime on Saturday made it nearly impossible to hear even in the enclosed press box.

Southern Comfort

Since many of you have been raised on the bitter hatred of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, I'm sure you're expecting that the Clemson fans would treat the invaders from the north and their supporters with disdain and disrespect.

Far from it. In fact, after the poor reviews some Florida State fans gave to the reception they got in Beantown, the South Carolinians were more hospitable than the Ritz-Carlton.

Wearing a BC shirt around campus at Clemson, you couldn't walk more than five minutes without being pulled over by another group of tailgaters. But instead of berating you, they were just excited to chat: about football, BC athletics, the excitement on campus, even what it's like to be so cold all year. And they were even quicker with offers of food, a chair to sit in, and an ice-cold beer - sorry sir, gotta keep my journalistic integrity.