49 Fun Facts About Clemson

Clemson's entire senior class volunteered for military service when the United States entered which war?

The First World War: in April 1917 the whole senior class offered itself for service together, and enrolment at the college dropped during the war.

Clemson's campus sits on Fort Hill, the former plantation of which US vice president?

John C. Calhoun's daughter Anna married Thomas Green Clemson, who inherited Fort Hill; his will ordered that the house never be torn down, and it still stands at the heart of campus.

Before founding the college, Thomas Green Clemson served as US chargé d'affaires to which country?

Belgium came through family: his father-in-law, then Secretary of State, arranged the posting in 1844, and as chargé he was the highest-ranking American diplomat in the country.

Thomas Clemson's will asked that the new school be modelled on which existing institution?

Mississippi State is named in the will itself, under its older title; the same will created seven trustees who choose their own successors, a majority the legislature can never remove.

Which future governor led the fight to accept Clemson's bequest and later had the main building named for him?

Benjamin Tillman rallied farmers behind the bequest and sat on the first board; in 2020 the trustees asked the state legislature for permission to restore the building's original name, Main Building.

Many of Clemson's original buildings were constructed by which workforce?

Convict labourers, most of them Black and some as young as 12, cleared the land, made the bricks and raised many of the first buildings.

Until 1955, Clemson was what kind of institution?

An all-white male military school until then, Clemson dropped compulsory cadet life in 1955 because enrolment was falling, and admitted its first women the same year.

Who became Clemson's first African-American student in 1963 after a federal court ordered his admission?

Harvey Gantt, barred from South Carolina's white colleges, had been studying in Iowa on a state stipend; he sued, won, and enrolled without the violence seen in Mississippi.

Clemson's first Black student went on to become the first Black mayor of which city?

Charlotte elected the Clemson-trained architect to two terms from 1983; he then twice challenged Senator Jesse Helms and lost both times.

Which word left Clemson's name when the college became Clemson University in 1964?

Agricultural had been in the name since the founder's will called for a farmers' college; by 1964 the legislature accepted that the school now taught and researched far more.

Which future governor and US senator graduated from Clemson in 1923?

Strom Thurmond left Clemson to become a schoolteacher before he turned to politics; the university's Strom Thurmond Institute was built in his honour in 1989.

Clemson's campus rests on the shore of which reservoir?

Lake Hartwell is younger than the college: work on its dam across the Savannah River began in 1955, and the water rose to meet one edge of the 1,400-acre campus.

Which Clemson speciality was first cured in an unfinished railway tunnel in the mountains near Walhalla?

Blue cheese liked the Stumphouse Tunnel's cool, damp air; when production moved to campus, the ripening rooms were built to copy the tunnel's conditions.

Clemson fans first spent Tiger Paw-stamped $2 bills in 1977 to protest which school's decision to drop their series?

Georgia Tech was ending the rivalry, so fans paid their way around Atlanta in marked $2 bills to show how much money they brought to town; the series resumed in 1983.

Which 'father of Clemson football' brought the sport from Auburn and later became Clemson's president?

Walter Riggs had played on Auburn's first team; he coached Clemson's first in 1896 and later led the whole college as president until his death in 1924.

Which coaching great led Clemson to its first undefeated season in 1900, his first year in charge?

John Heisman, the man the Heisman Trophy is named for, spent four seasons at Clemson; a few years later he led the campaign that made the forward pass legal.

Which coach took Clemson to its first bowl game, then left for Rice and handed the team to Frank Howard?

Jess Neely won that Cotton Bowl and stayed at Rice for 27 seasons; the assistant he left behind kept the Clemson job for thirty.

Alumnus Samuel Jones picked up Howard's Rock in which state?

California is where the alumnus found it; mounted on a pedestal in 1966, the rock became a ritual a year later, when Howard said only players giving 110 percent could rub it.

Howard's Rock first stood above the field in September 1966, when Clemson beat which team 40–35?

Virginia never beat a Frank Howard team: he won every meeting in thirty seasons, though this one, on the rock's first afternoon, was among the narrowest.

What happened to Howard's Rock in June 2013?

Vandals broke off a large chunk after smashing its case; one man was later convicted of malicious damage to the rock but cleared of grand larceny.

Which nickname for Clemson's Memorial Stadium was coined by Presbyterian coach Lonnie McMillian in the late 1940s?

Death Valley was his name for the place his teams went to lose: Clemson beat Presbyterian there with such regularity that the stadium's nickname stuck.

The 'Running Down the Hill' entrance began because the football locker rooms were in which building?

Fike Field House was where the team dressed, so running down the hill was simply the way to work; with locker rooms now inside the stadium, players ride a bus round to the top to keep the entrance.

Who cleared the brush and trees from the site of Clemson's Memorial Stadium in 1941?

The football players helped with much of the early work, and two of them staked out the field; in September 1942 the team opened the stadium it had helped to build by beating Presbyterian 32–13.

Which coach led Clemson to its first national championship in 1981?

Danny Ford was only 33, the youngest coach to have won a national title as of 2023; his first game in charge, three years earlier, was a bowl win over Ohio State.

Clemson clinched the 1981 national title by beating which team in the Orange Bowl?

Nebraska lost 22–15 in Miami to a Clemson team that had not been ranked when the season began; the win sealed a 12–0 record and the first national championship for any Clemson team.

Whom did Dabo Swinney replace as Clemson's head coach midway through the 2008 season?

Tommy Bowden resigned with the team at 3–3 and his receivers coach took over; in 2024 that successor passed Bowden's own father, Bobby, for the most wins by any coach in their conference.

Dabo Swinney's nickname comes from an older brother's attempt to say which two words?

'That boy' is how one of his brothers referred to the baby, and it came out as Dabo; his real name is William, and before Clemson hired him he spent two years selling commercial real estate.

Clemson won the national title in both 2016 and 2018 by beating which team?

Alabama had beaten Clemson for the title the year before the first of those wins; the two met in the playoff four seasons running, and the last of them was a 44–16 rout.

Which Clemson quarterback threw the winning touchdown with one second left in the 2016 season's national title game?

Deshaun Watson, trailing by three, found a former walk-on in the end zone; a year earlier he had lost the same final by five points.

Which former walk-on caught Clemson's winning touchdown in the 2016 season's national title game?

Hunter Renfrow had joined the team without a scholarship; his catch with one second left turned a three-point deficit into a 35–31 win.

Clemson's 2018 team finished 15–0, the first major program to do so since which school in 1897?

Penn was the last because seasons were rarely long enough: Clemson needed twelve regular-season games, a conference title game and two playoff rounds to reach fifteen wins.

Which freshman quarterback led Clemson to the 2018 season's national title?

Trevor Lawrence took the job from the previous year's starter early in his first season, lost only twice as a starter in three years and went first in the 2021 NFL draft.

Clemson lost the January 2020 national championship game to which team?

LSU won 42–25 in New Orleans, ending a 29-game Clemson winning streak that had begun after a playoff semi-final defeat two seasons earlier.

Clemson has been a member of which athletic league since the 1953–54 season?

The Atlantic Coast Conference was formed in 1953 by seven schools that broke away from the Southern Conference, Clemson among them; Clemson won its football title game six years running from 2015 to 2020.

Clemson's annual football game against South Carolina has been officially known since 2014 by what name?

The Palmetto Bowl had long been the fans' name for it before both schools made it official; the rivals met every year from 1909 until the pandemic stopped the 2020 game.

Until 1959, the Clemson–South Carolina game was played in Columbia during the State Fair on what day?

Big Thursday closed schools, businesses and state offices; Clemson, tired of always being the visitor, pushed for alternating hosts, won the last one 27–0 and brought the game home in 1960.

Clemson's booster club IPTAY, founded in 1934, takes its name from which pledge?

I Pay Ten A Year was the pledge, ten dollars a year for Clemson athletics; the club began as a secret order whose members swore an oath, and it now raises millions.

Clemson's fight song, billed as 'the song that shakes the Southland', is which tune?

Tiger Rag came to Clemson by chance: a student bandleader found the sheet music in an Atlanta shop in the early 1940s, and the band has played it at games ever since.

Which mock ceremony for South Carolina's mascot is a Clemson tradition before the rivalry game?

A funeral for the Gamecock has long been Clemson's half of a paired ritual: South Carolina burns a tiger before the same game.

About 500 Clemson students walked out in 1924 after the college refused their demand for better what?

Food was the grievance, along with the mess officer who served it; the college dismissed 23 students, suspended 112, kept the officer and later named a dining hall after him.

Which colour, officially called Regalia, is Clemson's partner to orange?

Purple goes by the name Regalia in Clemson's own colour guide, which says it harks back to the university's academic history.

Banks McFadden, star of Clemson's 1940 Cotton Bowl win, was an All-American in football and which other sport?

Basketball came first: he was an All-American on the court in 1938 and 1939 before adding football honours, and Clemson later retired his number in both sports.

Which defending national champion did Clemson beat 13–3 at home early in its 1981 title season?

Georgia, the 1980 champion, managed only a field goal that day; the upset started Clemson's climb to a 12–0 season and a title of its own.

Which coach succeeded Frank Howard in 1970 and lasted three losing seasons at Clemson?

Hootie Ingram's teams gave up running down the hill for most of his three seasons; the entrance came back for the 1972 finale, a 7–6 win over South Carolina.

Clemson's football rivalry with NC State is known by what name, a nod to an industry both schools serve?

The Textile Bowl was created in 1981 by the two states' textile manufacturers to cap Textile Week; both schools were then among about a dozen in the country offering textile degrees.

Clemson's first-ever bowl game, the 1940 Cotton Bowl Classic, was against which future conference rival?

Boston College lost 6–3 in Dallas under Frank Leahy, a young coach who left a year later for Notre Dame and won four national titles there.

Which automaker set up an IT research centre at Clemson's CU-ICAR campus in Greenville?

The 250-acre automotive research campus opened in 2013 and counts Michelin, Bosch and Microsoft among its partners.

Clemson's Warren Lasch Conservation Center has worked to stabilise which Civil War vessel?

The H. L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic off Charleston in 1864, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, and never came home; raised in 2000, it has been at the centre ever since.

When it opened in 1942, Clemson's Memorial Stadium was dedicated to the memory of whom?

Clemson's war dead gave the stadium its name just as a new war was beginning; hundreds more alumni were killed before 1945, and a Scroll of Honor beside the stadium now lists them all.