great article about Clemson from Boston Globe (kinda long)

Sep 23, 2005, 8:57 AM

Atmospheric conditions
At Clemson, BC will get message loud and clear
By John Powers, Globe Staff | September 23, 2005

CLEMSON, S.C. -- ''The Hill," as they call it around here, is nothing like Bunker Hill. ''The Rock," which sits on a pedestal atop it, is a pebble compared to Plymouth Rock. It's all about context.

When Clemson's football players rub Howard's Rock for luck, then dash down the hill into Memorial Stadium, they do it in front of 80,000 orange-clad fanatics crammed into a double-decked, concrete boom box. ''Sometimes you get a wine-and-cheese crowd that shows up 30 minutes before kickoff," said coach Tommy Bowden. ''This is completely different."

Anyone who comes into Death Valley, as Boston College will at high noon tomorrow in its first road game as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, raves about the ''great football atmosphere." Which it is, right up until the visitors take the field.

''It's awful," declared Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, whose varsity actually has won seven of its eight games here. ''We've played at LSU, we've played at Florida, we've played at Michigan, we've played at Ohio State, we've played at Nebraska. Clemson is as loud as any of 'em."

Not that other ACC venues can't be ear-splitting, most notably Florida State's Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee. What makes Death Valley unique is topography and architecture. The steeply pitched stands turn the gridiron into a cockpit. The hill closes off one end zone; the still-in-progress $54 million ''front door" addition walls in the other.

''When we get the west end zone finished, we'll have the opportunity to be one of the loudest stadiums in America," said athletic director Terry Don Phillips.

It was plenty loud enough during last Saturday's date with Miami, when the Tigers made their usual last-minute comeback before losing, 36-30, in triple overtime. ''Those last three minutes were the loudest I've ever heard it," said quarterback Charlie Whitehurst.

When the howling starts, compounded by the sound of a roaring tiger from the loudspeakers, decibel levels become immaterial. ''You're kind of splitting hairs after you can't hear," said Miami offensive tackle Eric Winston. ''When you can't hear, you can't hear."

Not that the noise is hostile. It's just ear-splitting and constant, especially when the visitors have the ball. (When Clemson does, the scoreboard counsels: QUIET . . . OFFENSE AT WORK). ''It's not meant to intimidate," said Tommy Bowden. ''It's meant to disrupt communications with the offensive line and with the coaches on the sidelines."

Last week, Kyle Wright, the Hurricanes' sophomore quarterback, spent much of his time waving and pointing to his receivers because his voice was being drowned out. ''Lots of quarterbacks make checkoffs at the line of scrimmage," said Clemson defensive end Charles Bennett. ''It's very confusing for them."

It's no accident that the Tigers' home winning percentage is 71, as opposed to 49 percent on the road. Last year, they were 5-1 in Death Valley, 1-4 elsewhere. As soon as they rub the rock, they feel invincible. ''We could not do the things we do," declared linebacker Anthony Waters, ''without this crowd."

The Tigers have this whole corner of the state by the tail. The nearest professional football teams -- Atlanta and Charlotte -- are more than a two-hour drive away. The University of South Carolina, their archrival, is in Columbia, 137 miles to the southeast. The road to campus is painted with tiger tracks; every O in town has been replaced with a paw.

A Clemson fan can gas up at the Tiger Mart, grab dinner at the Tiger Town Tavern, touch up his tan at the Bronze Tiger, even get a mortgage at the Tiger Financial Center. Everything in the vicinity is ''Solid Orange."

''They're all for the Tigers," said Virginia coach Al Groh. ''It's a real football outing."

The outing begins by Thursday noon, when the recreational vehicles start rumbling into town and their owners set up bivouacs. On Friday night, fans drop by the bars along College Street or head down to the Esso Club, the former service station on Old Greenville Highway where the sauces for the chicken wings come in ''teriyaki, unleaded, or premium."

On Saturday, the parking lots start filling up hours before kickoff, with fans pitching shade tents and spreading out lunch, beer and iced tea. Every tree on campus has a half-dozen people sprawled beneath it. Those without tickets (as many as 5,000 for a sold-out game) come and tailgate anyway, wedging their paw-festooned vans onto grassy hillsides along Perimeter Road.

''Clemson has always been sort of a mystery to me," said Phillips, who played his football at Arkansas and coached at Virginia Tech. ''Our school is not big [13,900 undergrads]. Our town is not big [12,000]. You think, where do all these folks come from?"

Thus the challenge for the athletic department, which somehow has to accommodate 55,000 season ticket-holders, 11,000 students, and 21,000 members of IPTAY, the supporters' group that has been donating money since the Depression years. Who gets to sit and park where? ''There's that delicate balance between longevity and generosity," said Bill D'Andrea, the senior associate athletic director for external affairs.

That wasn't a problem in 1940, when Clemson was still a sleepy agricultural and mechanical arts school tucked away in what South Carolinians call The Upstate near the Blue Ridge Mountains. ''Don't ever let them talk you into building a big stadium," coach Jess Neely advised when he decamped for Rice. ''Put about 10,000 seats behind the YMCA. That's all you'll ever need."

Instead, school officials, wowed by that year's Cotton Bowl victory over Boston College, built a 20,000-seat facility, which grew to 38,000 by 1958 and 53,000 a few years later. By then, the stadium had long since been dubbed Death Valley by Lonnie McMillian, who routinely brought his Presbyterian College varsity there to be slaughtered.

Running Down The Hill (it began as a jog) had already become a tradition by 1960 -- it was the quickest way to get to the field from the dressing room. The rubbing of the rock, a chunk of Death Valley flint brought back from California by an alumnus, began in 1967 after coach Frank Howard got tired of it cluttering his floor. ''Take this rock and throw it over the fence or out in the ditch," he ordered. ''Do something with it, but get it out of my office."

The rubbing and the running are the Tigers' entrance fetishes now, accompanied by a huge tiger paw flag, the playing of ''Tiger Rag," and the booming of a cannon, with 80,000 orange-clad communicants roaring. ''I remember lining up for the kickoff for my first game," said cornerback Tye Hill, ''just looking up at the top balcony and going, 'Whoa!' "

Until Florida State joined the conference in 1991, Clemson had no rival for the most festive, most forbidding milieu. ''Back then, this was the only school with an SEC environment," said Tommy Bowden, who had been an assistant coach at Alabama, Kentucky, and Auburn.

As the ACC expanded and upgraded, the game-day atmosphere ratcheted up. Still, Clemson stands apart, especially for visitors -- like BC -- who are unaccustomed to the pressure-cooker combination of noise and heat (figure around 90 degrees at kickoff tomorrow). ''I would say it's an intimidating environment," said Hill. ''It'll be a huge difference for [BC] -- especially when nobody will be rooting for them."

Not that visitors can't prevail at Death Valley. Miami did it last week, although it took three overtimes and more than four hours. Georgia Tech has won three of its last four visits, Virginia three of its last five. BC, which first played here in 1949, is 1-2-1, most recently tying, 17-17, in 1982, when Doug Flutie was a sophomore.

''Boston College has played at Notre Dame and Penn State," said North Carolina State coach Chuck Amato, whose Wolfpack have won three of their last six games here. ''They've played at big-time schools. They've been through it before."

What the Eagles haven't been through is a whole season of Saturdays in the South. This year, it's Clemson, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, and Maryland. Every year, they'll be logging more road miles than anyone else -- 989 to Clemson, 1,094 to Atlanta, 1,314 to Tallahassee, 1,509 to Miami. In the ACC solar system, Chestnut Hill is Pluto.

Tomorrow is BC's baptism in a fiery orange cauldron. It won't be intimidating, the hosts promise. It'll be exciting. ''They'll come in on the bus and look at the crowd," said Tommy Bowden, ''and they'll think, this is what college football is all about."

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great article about Clemson from Boston Globe (kinda long)

That was really a good article, but

I think BC and Miami fans are excited about playing many new

Wow, they give Clemson some props.***

Nice!***

Very nice. One correction: it WILL be intimidating. :-)***

Death Valley becomes a cockpit?

Chucky will never say anything positive about Clemson.

It's cause we rag him about the shoes....

LOL!........and of course the woman parts :-)***

everything he says just sounds so arrogant to me

Now THAT was a very fine article......very gratious***

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