The Natty
I have always wanted to attend a championship parade.
I've watched from afar as my Steelers (2005, 2008) and Penguins (2009, 2016) paraded up and down Pittsburgh after winning the championship and there honestly could have been a parade to celebrate the Pirates when they returned to the playoffs for the first time since before I was born in 2013. I watched Shaq rap and dance, Marshawn Lynch eat Skittles and smoke cigars, and just this past June I watched J.R. Smith go shirtless and Clevelanders scale buildings. But for the first time yesterday, I was able to attend a championship parade myself.
I'm not sure what the reports have indicated, but there could easily have been 70,000 peoiple in and around Death Valley yesterday to celebrate Clemson University's first national championship in 35 years (coincidentally the same point total required to bring another title back to Clemson this season). It honestly looked like any other gameday in the tiny city of Clemson, South Carolina--with parking extending almost two miles into the city's outer borders around the stadium. But this story of this championship--at least for me--goes way back before a parade.
This story goes back before Tampa.
Before the pizza party.
Before BYOG became more than a conglomeration of letters standing for something more emotional than that.
Before a freshman from Gainesville, Georgia named Deshaun began taking snaps from under center.
Before Sammy threw oranges into the Miami night after torching THE defense for Ohio State University.
Before my friends and I would make the 10-15 minute trek over to the stadium at 2 am on Friday nights, because we wanted to gaze upon the grounds that would hold us and 80,000 of our buddies the next day.
This story starts on September 17, 2011, the day I first felt Memorial Stadium shake.
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I've told the story before about how originally I didn't care when it came to Clemson University or the University of South Carolina. The two schools were the Goliaths in this state, but I had forever grown up a fan of Notre Dame. I still have the little leprechaun that starts singing upon shaking in my office today. I applied to both schools, got into Clemson, liked the smaller town feel, and got going as a Tiger. I got involved in the sports information department, to be rebranded as the athletic communications department by the time I graduated, and now the department responsible for glorious digital media productions such as this.
It was therefore due to my working in that department that I ended up working in the press box for Clemson football home games. Cheering is not allowed in the press box. I was explaining this concept to some of my middle school students the other day and their minds were blown. Cheering is a fundamental component of sports. So it was that the press box was usually pretty calm, quiet, and collected.
September 17, 2011. Clemson welcomed Auburn to Death Valley fresh off of Auburn's national championship with Cam Newton at the helm. The other Tigers jumped out to a 14-0 lead about halfway through the first quarter. They lead by as many as two touchdowns but by halftime the score was tied 21-all.
Clemson made the third quarter theirs, going up 35-24 before the fourth. But the game still seemed closer than that. This was the defending national champion after all. After a Chandler Catanzaro field goal had given the right Tigers a 13-point lead with 11 minutes remaining in the contest, Auburn was driving. They had started at their own 20 and had trekked 72 yards down the field to put themselves at the Clemson 8. It looked as if they might just score and make it a one-touchdown game with plenty of time left.
As Barrett Trotter took the snap, he pumped quickly before scampering back to his left. Then, he unleashed almost a side-armed throw...right into the hands of a diving Coty Sensabaugh at the Clemson 5-yard line. The pick ended Auburn's drive, their chances at a win, and abruptly capped off the defending national champion's 17-game winning streak. The stadium erupted. It was the first time I felt Death Valley shake.
In the press box, we always sat in chairs--which for me was a different feel than sitting on a stadium bench seat. Later I'd learn that on certain occasions, I could absolutely feel the stadium quake with the upper deck above us and the lower deck under our feet (pregame Georgia and Florida State in 2013 instantly come to mind), but this was the first time I really thought "holy crap, I'm sitting inside a structure that is actually moving." I think that was the day I adopted Clemson as my own--and obviously that wouldn't be the last time I sweat out the outcome of a Clemson Tigers football game.
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It's New Year's Eve 2012. My dad, Dan, and I had made the impromptu decision to drive down to Atlanta for the Clemson-LSU football game in the Chick-fil-a Bowl. Number 8 Louisiana State University versus my number 14 Clemson University Tigers. Clemson fans might remember it for a few different things. Sammy getting hurt on one of the first plays of the game, #4thAnd16, Catman's kick. I remember that game for three main reasons.
First, there was the guy behind us giving a high-five to every person that entered our section.
Second, there were the two LSU fans on the MARTA back to our car absolutely befuddled by Les Miles' play-calling.
Third, there were the looks my dad and brother gave me when I started jumping up and down upon seeing Chandler Catanzaro's 37-yard field goal go through the uprights, giving Clemson the victory and Clemson fans everywhere a very joyous beginning to 2013. I think that was the first time they saw my Clemson fandom on display full force. I remember almost falling down the stairs from jumping up and down. Little did I know what a truly eerie teaser that would be for what was to come.
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Fast forward three years and Kristin and I are driving down to Tampa, Florida. We'd been able to ask off from school and were driving the 8.5 hour drive down to our hotel and Raymond James Stadium. We'd been attending Clemson games together for two years, this past season our first as a married couple. We had many reasons to believe that this year's natty was destiny, maybe chief among them the fact that our sixth month wedding anniversary was the same day as the national championship. I tweeted out about how cool it was to be driving down I-95 into Florida and see so much orange on the road. Kristin had a hard time concentrating on driving with how excited she was to see all the Tiger flags, orange paint, bumper stickers, and magnets on cars--not to mention the older orange mustang we saw with Tiger paws painted all over it.
It hadn't really sunk in for the two of us that we were attending the college football national championship until about two days before we left, let alone the college football national championship that our alma mater was playing in. For a brief period of time, we went in with the thought that the game would be fun and that it would be a neat experience. But the closer we got to the game, we--like everyone else it appears--started drinking the kool-aid and started to believe that Clemson really had a chance and might actually win the whole darn thing.
Kristin asked me about three days before we left "can you imagine if they won while we were down there?" I told her I couldn't even entertain the thought.
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On the morning of the game, we woke up in our hotel and immediately flipped on SportsCenter. I've pretty much given up on SportsCenter, what with social media offering the same highlights and SC's ridiculous penchant for honing in on the same topic for 40 minutes at a time at the expense of highlights, but we simply had to divulge on the source of so much pregame chatter from the stadium 20 minutes down the road.
After lunch with a great childhood friend of Kristin's (hi, Nicole!), we braved the most awful traffic imaginable for me as a sports fan--a national championship--and finally arrived at our tailgate spot with a good friend from camp (hi, Courtney!). In another crazy twist of circumstance, we eventually ended up at the same tailgate as my freshman roommate at Clemson (sup, Mitty) before making our way into the stadium.
Once we got through the security gate--at which we were behind one of my students from school. small world, huh?--I had to stop and collect myself for a minute. Running through my mind again was the notion that I was at the college football national championship. Put aside the fact, for just a moment, that Clemson was playing. I was at the venue that held the same stage that witnessed Miami-Ohio State in 2002, the same stage that permitted Vince Young to run amok in 2006, the same stage that brought Urban Meyer to legendary status and made USC and Alabama immortal on the college football gridiron. I was at the college football national championship. And oh yeah, by the way, Clemson was here to play.
I refused to allow myself to look out on the field until we went up to our section, so even when friends we were with wanted to go look out at the field as soon as we entered the stadium, I stayed put. When we finally exited the tunnel to our section and looked out onto the field, it was as glorious a sight as I have beheld.
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When we reached our seats, Kristin and I quickly made acquaintance with the couple next to us. For most of the first half, I yelled at the field from so high up that I think I could have touched the pre-game flyover had I put my hand up. I yelled at the refs, I yelled at the play-calling. I think at a couple points in time I yelled to yell. I was nervous and that was my way of coping, I guess. By about halftime I was settled in and I think at that point in time the team was settled in as well.
The second half was a roller coaster of emotions. That cliche gets thrown around a lot, but I can't think of a more accurate description for this instance. Literally every time it appeared as if Clemson could make moves after stopping an Alabama drive, the Tigers punted right back and the cycle started itself again.
When Clemson scored with 4:38 to play, it was pretty hype in our upper deck section--as I'm sure it was in every other Clemson section in the stadium. (Did I mention that the game was played at Raymond James Stadium? My middle name is Raymond.) However at that point in time I felt like there was still a sense of "this is Alabama. They're good and 4+ minutes is quite a bit of time left."
It turned out that that premonition would prove to be accurate. It was impressive watching Jaylen Hurts commandeer his team down the field in a six-play, 68-yard drive that ended with Hurts' sprinting into the endzone from 30 yards out. My dad in a text after the game used the word "poise" and that was the most accurate wording to use there.
But they gave Deshaun too much time. As Clemson worked its way down the field, at a time when running would serve no purpose so they would have to pass, not only was I overjoyed that the running game had been abandoned, but for another time that night I felt again like it was Clemson's time.
For much of the night I just had this weird feeling that we were going to walk out of that stadium with Clemson ahead on the scoreboard. I couldn't much envision much else beyond that, but I couldn't shake the feeling that at the end of the game we would look at the scoreboard and Clemson would have at least one more point than Alabama.
So when there was the pass-interference call on Bama and Clemson had the ball placed at the two-yard line, as I put my hands on my knees and leaned over for fear of hyperventilating, I remember telling Kristin (unnecessarily) that if Clemson scored at that point in time, with 6 seconds on the clock, that the stadium and its 60-40 Clemson crowd was going to go "bananas."
🍌🍌🍌
Remember how at the Chick-fil-a bowl I admitted to jumping up and down? This was Part II of that experience, only much, much better. I remember jumping up and down, hugging Kristin, and screaming "oh my God" give or take 60 times. I gave the guy next to me a hug--I'd met him 5 hours earlier. Kristin was tearing up, I was tearing up. I was nervous that the guy behind me was going to have a heart attack, fall over and crush me--not that I really cared. There were people crying across the aisle from us. Folks hugging and screaming and cheering and clapping and in general just going bananas. I completely forgot how cold and tired we were after being in the upper deck in the unnaturally brisk Florida night for 5+ hours. Christian Wilkins took off his shirt about 15 minutes later and I wish I had thought of it first in that moment.
I remember saying "this is unreal," "how is this happening," "what is happening," or some other variation of those three several times over the next two hours as we shuffled out of the stadium after the post-game festivities and got into our car to sift through the traffic back to our hotel. Then over the 9-hour car ride home the next day. It seemed like there were even more cars with Tiger flags, magnets, stickers, and paint on the way home.
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It's hard to think back on that first season I watched Clemson football in 2011 as I write this 27 hours post Clemson's first national title parade in 35 years. There was so much joy in the air yesterday, along with a tremendous communal feel and an air of accomplishment. While I don't feel any special attachment to the 1981 team having not been a Clemson fan that far back, and having not grown up in a Clemson household, I still felt a sense of gratitude towards the members of the '81 team in attendance at the parade yesterday for setting the bar for my Clemson teams to strive towards and for establishing a culture of Tiger pride. I'll be able to tell my grandkids about this year's team and how their grandmother and I were at the game where the magic happened.
I found irony in the fact that Dabo gave his speech at the parade ceremony for 32 minutes--still a minute longer than the number of points Alabama scored 6 days ago. I was able to have good friends come into town to go with us to the parade (shoutout to Juan and C-lin) and it was cool to have friends who had been there pretty much from the start of my time at Clemson. This national championship made me think a lot of my early college buddies and the joy we had in watching the Tigers my first couple years in school. We got such a thrill out of mimicking Chad Morris' uptempo offense and watching Tajh, and Nuke, and Dwayne Allen, and Andre Ellington, and Andre Branch, and Mallicah Goodman tear up the ACC and start Clemson on the journey that reached its pinnacle last Monday night in Tampa. There was definitely a part of me that thought back on 2011 and Clemson reaching its first ACC championship in 20 years--whooping out my dorm window in jubilation, welcoming the team back at 5 am and throwing oranges at and around the bus to say thank you and congratulations at the same time.
It's been a fun ride these last few years and Dabo continually says that the best is yet to come, but I don't know. He also says that best is the standard, so maybe the best is already here to stay. A guy could get used to attending championship parades.
I've watched from afar as my Steelers (2005, 2008) and Penguins (2009, 2016) paraded up and down Pittsburgh after winning the championship and there honestly could have been a parade to celebrate the Pirates when they returned to the playoffs for the first time since before I was born in 2013. I watched Shaq rap and dance, Marshawn Lynch eat Skittles and smoke cigars, and just this past June I watched J.R. Smith go shirtless and Clevelanders scale buildings. But for the first time yesterday, I was able to attend a championship parade myself.
I'm not sure what the reports have indicated, but there could easily have been 70,000 peoiple in and around Death Valley yesterday to celebrate Clemson University's first national championship in 35 years (coincidentally the same point total required to bring another title back to Clemson this season). It honestly looked like any other gameday in the tiny city of Clemson, South Carolina--with parking extending almost two miles into the city's outer borders around the stadium. But this story of this championship--at least for me--goes way back before a parade.
This story goes back before Tampa.
Before the pizza party.
Before BYOG became more than a conglomeration of letters standing for something more emotional than that.
Before a freshman from Gainesville, Georgia named Deshaun began taking snaps from under center.
Before Sammy threw oranges into the Miami night after torching THE defense for Ohio State University.
Before my friends and I would make the 10-15 minute trek over to the stadium at 2 am on Friday nights, because we wanted to gaze upon the grounds that would hold us and 80,000 of our buddies the next day.
This story starts on September 17, 2011, the day I first felt Memorial Stadium shake.
---
I've told the story before about how originally I didn't care when it came to Clemson University or the University of South Carolina. The two schools were the Goliaths in this state, but I had forever grown up a fan of Notre Dame. I still have the little leprechaun that starts singing upon shaking in my office today. I applied to both schools, got into Clemson, liked the smaller town feel, and got going as a Tiger. I got involved in the sports information department, to be rebranded as the athletic communications department by the time I graduated, and now the department responsible for glorious digital media productions such as this.
It was therefore due to my working in that department that I ended up working in the press box for Clemson football home games. Cheering is not allowed in the press box. I was explaining this concept to some of my middle school students the other day and their minds were blown. Cheering is a fundamental component of sports. So it was that the press box was usually pretty calm, quiet, and collected.
September 17, 2011. Clemson welcomed Auburn to Death Valley fresh off of Auburn's national championship with Cam Newton at the helm. The other Tigers jumped out to a 14-0 lead about halfway through the first quarter. They lead by as many as two touchdowns but by halftime the score was tied 21-all.
Clemson made the third quarter theirs, going up 35-24 before the fourth. But the game still seemed closer than that. This was the defending national champion after all. After a Chandler Catanzaro field goal had given the right Tigers a 13-point lead with 11 minutes remaining in the contest, Auburn was driving. They had started at their own 20 and had trekked 72 yards down the field to put themselves at the Clemson 8. It looked as if they might just score and make it a one-touchdown game with plenty of time left.
As Barrett Trotter took the snap, he pumped quickly before scampering back to his left. Then, he unleashed almost a side-armed throw...right into the hands of a diving Coty Sensabaugh at the Clemson 5-yard line. The pick ended Auburn's drive, their chances at a win, and abruptly capped off the defending national champion's 17-game winning streak. The stadium erupted. It was the first time I felt Death Valley shake.
In the press box, we always sat in chairs--which for me was a different feel than sitting on a stadium bench seat. Later I'd learn that on certain occasions, I could absolutely feel the stadium quake with the upper deck above us and the lower deck under our feet (pregame Georgia and Florida State in 2013 instantly come to mind), but this was the first time I really thought "holy crap, I'm sitting inside a structure that is actually moving." I think that was the day I adopted Clemson as my own--and obviously that wouldn't be the last time I sweat out the outcome of a Clemson Tigers football game.
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It's New Year's Eve 2012. My dad, Dan, and I had made the impromptu decision to drive down to Atlanta for the Clemson-LSU football game in the Chick-fil-a Bowl. Number 8 Louisiana State University versus my number 14 Clemson University Tigers. Clemson fans might remember it for a few different things. Sammy getting hurt on one of the first plays of the game, #4thAnd16, Catman's kick. I remember that game for three main reasons.
First, there was the guy behind us giving a high-five to every person that entered our section.
Second, there were the two LSU fans on the MARTA back to our car absolutely befuddled by Les Miles' play-calling.
Third, there were the looks my dad and brother gave me when I started jumping up and down upon seeing Chandler Catanzaro's 37-yard field goal go through the uprights, giving Clemson the victory and Clemson fans everywhere a very joyous beginning to 2013. I think that was the first time they saw my Clemson fandom on display full force. I remember almost falling down the stairs from jumping up and down. Little did I know what a truly eerie teaser that would be for what was to come.
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Fast forward three years and Kristin and I are driving down to Tampa, Florida. We'd been able to ask off from school and were driving the 8.5 hour drive down to our hotel and Raymond James Stadium. We'd been attending Clemson games together for two years, this past season our first as a married couple. We had many reasons to believe that this year's natty was destiny, maybe chief among them the fact that our sixth month wedding anniversary was the same day as the national championship. I tweeted out about how cool it was to be driving down I-95 into Florida and see so much orange on the road. Kristin had a hard time concentrating on driving with how excited she was to see all the Tiger flags, orange paint, bumper stickers, and magnets on cars--not to mention the older orange mustang we saw with Tiger paws painted all over it.
It hadn't really sunk in for the two of us that we were attending the college football national championship until about two days before we left, let alone the college football national championship that our alma mater was playing in. For a brief period of time, we went in with the thought that the game would be fun and that it would be a neat experience. But the closer we got to the game, we--like everyone else it appears--started drinking the kool-aid and started to believe that Clemson really had a chance and might actually win the whole darn thing.
Kristin asked me about three days before we left "can you imagine if they won while we were down there?" I told her I couldn't even entertain the thought.
---
On the morning of the game, we woke up in our hotel and immediately flipped on SportsCenter. I've pretty much given up on SportsCenter, what with social media offering the same highlights and SC's ridiculous penchant for honing in on the same topic for 40 minutes at a time at the expense of highlights, but we simply had to divulge on the source of so much pregame chatter from the stadium 20 minutes down the road.
After lunch with a great childhood friend of Kristin's (hi, Nicole!), we braved the most awful traffic imaginable for me as a sports fan--a national championship--and finally arrived at our tailgate spot with a good friend from camp (hi, Courtney!). In another crazy twist of circumstance, we eventually ended up at the same tailgate as my freshman roommate at Clemson (sup, Mitty) before making our way into the stadium.
Once we got through the security gate--at which we were behind one of my students from school. small world, huh?--I had to stop and collect myself for a minute. Running through my mind again was the notion that I was at the college football national championship. Put aside the fact, for just a moment, that Clemson was playing. I was at the venue that held the same stage that witnessed Miami-Ohio State in 2002, the same stage that permitted Vince Young to run amok in 2006, the same stage that brought Urban Meyer to legendary status and made USC and Alabama immortal on the college football gridiron. I was at the college football national championship. And oh yeah, by the way, Clemson was here to play.
I refused to allow myself to look out on the field until we went up to our section, so even when friends we were with wanted to go look out at the field as soon as we entered the stadium, I stayed put. When we finally exited the tunnel to our section and looked out onto the field, it was as glorious a sight as I have beheld.
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When we reached our seats, Kristin and I quickly made acquaintance with the couple next to us. For most of the first half, I yelled at the field from so high up that I think I could have touched the pre-game flyover had I put my hand up. I yelled at the refs, I yelled at the play-calling. I think at a couple points in time I yelled to yell. I was nervous and that was my way of coping, I guess. By about halftime I was settled in and I think at that point in time the team was settled in as well.
The second half was a roller coaster of emotions. That cliche gets thrown around a lot, but I can't think of a more accurate description for this instance. Literally every time it appeared as if Clemson could make moves after stopping an Alabama drive, the Tigers punted right back and the cycle started itself again.
When Clemson scored with 4:38 to play, it was pretty hype in our upper deck section--as I'm sure it was in every other Clemson section in the stadium. (Did I mention that the game was played at Raymond James Stadium? My middle name is Raymond.) However at that point in time I felt like there was still a sense of "this is Alabama. They're good and 4+ minutes is quite a bit of time left."
It turned out that that premonition would prove to be accurate. It was impressive watching Jaylen Hurts commandeer his team down the field in a six-play, 68-yard drive that ended with Hurts' sprinting into the endzone from 30 yards out. My dad in a text after the game used the word "poise" and that was the most accurate wording to use there.
But they gave Deshaun too much time. As Clemson worked its way down the field, at a time when running would serve no purpose so they would have to pass, not only was I overjoyed that the running game had been abandoned, but for another time that night I felt again like it was Clemson's time.
For much of the night I just had this weird feeling that we were going to walk out of that stadium with Clemson ahead on the scoreboard. I couldn't much envision much else beyond that, but I couldn't shake the feeling that at the end of the game we would look at the scoreboard and Clemson would have at least one more point than Alabama.
So when there was the pass-interference call on Bama and Clemson had the ball placed at the two-yard line, as I put my hands on my knees and leaned over for fear of hyperventilating, I remember telling Kristin (unnecessarily) that if Clemson scored at that point in time, with 6 seconds on the clock, that the stadium and its 60-40 Clemson crowd was going to go "bananas."
🍌🍌🍌
Remember how at the Chick-fil-a bowl I admitted to jumping up and down? This was Part II of that experience, only much, much better. I remember jumping up and down, hugging Kristin, and screaming "oh my God" give or take 60 times. I gave the guy next to me a hug--I'd met him 5 hours earlier. Kristin was tearing up, I was tearing up. I was nervous that the guy behind me was going to have a heart attack, fall over and crush me--not that I really cared. There were people crying across the aisle from us. Folks hugging and screaming and cheering and clapping and in general just going bananas. I completely forgot how cold and tired we were after being in the upper deck in the unnaturally brisk Florida night for 5+ hours. Christian Wilkins took off his shirt about 15 minutes later and I wish I had thought of it first in that moment.
I remember saying "this is unreal," "how is this happening," "what is happening," or some other variation of those three several times over the next two hours as we shuffled out of the stadium after the post-game festivities and got into our car to sift through the traffic back to our hotel. Then over the 9-hour car ride home the next day. It seemed like there were even more cars with Tiger flags, magnets, stickers, and paint on the way home.
---
It's hard to think back on that first season I watched Clemson football in 2011 as I write this 27 hours post Clemson's first national title parade in 35 years. There was so much joy in the air yesterday, along with a tremendous communal feel and an air of accomplishment. While I don't feel any special attachment to the 1981 team having not been a Clemson fan that far back, and having not grown up in a Clemson household, I still felt a sense of gratitude towards the members of the '81 team in attendance at the parade yesterday for setting the bar for my Clemson teams to strive towards and for establishing a culture of Tiger pride. I'll be able to tell my grandkids about this year's team and how their grandmother and I were at the game where the magic happened.
I found irony in the fact that Dabo gave his speech at the parade ceremony for 32 minutes--still a minute longer than the number of points Alabama scored 6 days ago. I was able to have good friends come into town to go with us to the parade (shoutout to Juan and C-lin) and it was cool to have friends who had been there pretty much from the start of my time at Clemson. This national championship made me think a lot of my early college buddies and the joy we had in watching the Tigers my first couple years in school. We got such a thrill out of mimicking Chad Morris' uptempo offense and watching Tajh, and Nuke, and Dwayne Allen, and Andre Ellington, and Andre Branch, and Mallicah Goodman tear up the ACC and start Clemson on the journey that reached its pinnacle last Monday night in Tampa. There was definitely a part of me that thought back on 2011 and Clemson reaching its first ACC championship in 20 years--whooping out my dorm window in jubilation, welcoming the team back at 5 am and throwing oranges at and around the bus to say thank you and congratulations at the same time.
It's been a fun ride these last few years and Dabo continually says that the best is yet to come, but I don't know. He also says that best is the standard, so maybe the best is already here to stay. A guy could get used to attending championship parades.
