Most weekends in this letter you can take any time the weather is decent. This one runs on a schedule the conference and the networks set. A half-dozen or so Saturdays every fall, a town of about 19,000 people hosts a crowd of 81,500, and the whole Upstate leans toward Death Valley. So here is the home Saturday the way the families who do it every season actually run it: into the lot early, at the Hill on time, and the long way home on Sunday. And because this is South Carolina, a respectful nod to the other side of the state. As your “esteemed” editor here, I will say, staying unbiased has been quite difficult! But I won’t say it…
Damian Hall
CHIEF RELOCATION OFFICER, SOUTHERN ESCAPES
The Shape of the Day
A Weekend That Runs Down the Hill
Memorial Stadium at sundown
Memorial Stadium opened on September 19, 1942, and today it seats 81,500. The Census Bureau puts the City of Clemson at about 19,000 residents, so on a home Saturday the stadium alone holds more than four times the town. Roads, lots and dining rooms built for a Tuesday get asked to serve a small city for most of a day. The nickname, for the record, came from an opponent. Presbyterian's coach, Lonnie McMillian, started calling the place Death Valley in the late 1940s, and it stuck.
Here is the shape of it. Into the lot when it opens. Tiger Walk two hours before kickoff. In your seat for the run down the Hill. And Sunday slow, with ice cream from the campus scoop shop and the long way home past the lake.
The One to Get Right
T H E L O T S
Solve the parking before the menu.
Clemson's lots open at 6 AM for a noon or 1 PM kickoff and at 8 AM for anything later, and the spaces closest to the stadium belong to IPTAY, the athletic donor club, whose members hold the permits. The university does not currently sell general-admission football parking. Its answer for everyone else is complimentary parking at Seneca Creek Meadows, with a shuttle to Doug Kingsmore Stadium from the time the lots open until two hours after the game. On game days the town's CATbus, which charges no fare, also runs its Red Route to campus stops on Cherry Road and Bryan Circle.
If you are a guest in someone's IPTAY space, know the house rules before you unload: each space is 9 by 23 feet, the tent and the tables stay behind your own vehicle, and any generator has to run at 70 decibels or quieter. A night kickoff changes the math, too. The lots still open at 8 AM, which makes for a long day. Bring shade, plan a second meal, and pace yourself.
And pack for the gate, not just the lot. Memorial Stadium runs a clear-bag policy: a clear bag no larger than 12 by 6 by 12 inches, a one-gallon clear freezer bag, or a clutch about the size of your hand. Backpacks, purses and coolers stay in the car.
The Itinerary
Friday. Get in Friday and take dinner just down the road in Pendleton, at 1826 Bistro (more on it below), and book ahead on a game weekend. Then a nightcap back in Clemson at the Esso Club.
Saturday morning. The lots open early, and if you are tailgating, that is where the morning goes. For the spread itself, the most thorough Clemson-family checklist I know is Collectively Carolina's tailgating guide: what to gather two or three days out, how to keep food hot in crockpots, and a proper pot of chicken bog. If you are not tailgating, walk the South Carolina Botanical Garden on the edge of campus instead. It is complimentary, open sunrise to sunset every day of the year, and a quiet counterweight to the lots.
A few of our closest friends, tailgating before a home game
Two hours out. Tiger Walk starts about two hours before kickoff. The team comes off its buses in Lot P-3, also known as IPTAY Lot 5, and walks through the crowd to the WestZone entrance. Find your spot along the route early.
Kickoff. Then the reason you came. The rock at the top of the Hill came from Death Valley, California, brought to Clemson in the early 1960s by Samuel C. Jones Sr. for coach Frank Howard. It sat in Howard's office for more than a year until he told Gene Willimon of IPTAY to get rid of it, and Willimon set it at the top of the Hill in the east end zone. Players first rubbed it at the Wake Forest game on September 23, 1967.
Running down the Hill is older than the rock. It started by accident at the stadium's very first game in 1942, and today the team touches the rock and pours down the slope into the stadium. It is often called the most exciting 25 seconds in college football. Be in your seat for it.
A day game from the stands
Sunday. Sunday is slow by design. If you skipped the garden, go now. The '55 Exchange, the university's scoop shop in the Hendrix Student Center, opens at 1 on weekends, and the Hendrix Center is also where you buy the university's own Clemson Blue Cheese to take home. On a game day its hours shift with the kickoff, so check its Facebook page first. Then take the long way home, north past Lake Keowee, which is where plenty of yesterday's crowd actually stays.
The Table
A Clemson weekend eats casual, and the classics are the point. 1826 Bistro, 105 Exchange Street in Pendleton, is the one dinner to book: a seasonal menu that changes daily, served in historic Farmers Hall on the town green, Wednesday through Saturday from 4:30 to 8:30. Tiger Town Tavern, 368 College Avenue, has held down downtown since 1977. And the Esso Club, 129 Old Greenville Highway, started life as a filling station and is where game weekends end. Book 1826 for Friday and keep Saturday loose.
The original Esso station, before it was the Esso Club. Photo courtesy of the Esso Club
The same address on a game day. Photo courtesy of the Esso Club
The Other Side of the State
Every home Saturday in Clemson has a twin, 137 miles away in Columbia, and this state has never once agreed on which one is better. We are not going to settle it here. But a guide to a Clemson Saturday would be incomplete without a nod to the other one.
Williams-Brice Stadium seats 77,559, and the Gamecocks take the field to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, a tradition in its current form since 1983. After touchdowns the whole place waves towels to Darude's "Sandstorm," which started during a 2009 game against Ole Miss. And just beyond the south end zone sits a real estate story we cannot resist: the Cockaboose Railroad, 22 garnet cabooses parked for good on an unused track since 1990 and owned as private tailgate suites. One was reported on the market for just under $300,000 back in 2013. For a caboose that never moves.
The rivalry is older than either stadium. The two schools first met on November 12, 1896, in Columbia, and for the next six decades the game was Big Thursday, played in Columbia during State Fair week, through 1959. Since then it has alternated between the two campuses. Which is why, across this state, you will find a porch flying both flags, and a household that goes very quiet one Saturday every November.
A Clemson Year
Home Saturdays run from the end of August through November, usually six or seven a fall, and kickoff times are set by television, often only a week or so out. From May into September the same crowd lives on the water, on Lake Hartwell at the edge of campus and on Keowee to the north. And the Botanical Garden is open every day of the year.
If you can time it: a night kickoff, when the lights come up over the Hill. The South Carolina game in late November, which comes to Clemson in even-numbered years; the campus scoop shop closes for Thanksgiving break, so buy the blue cheese on an earlier trip. Or October, when the State Fair runs in Columbia, the week that once belonged to Big Thursday.
A first home game, under the lights.
The Home That Fits the Weekend
S O U T H E R N E S C A P E S
Twenty minutes from the Hill.
Walk a Clemson tailgate and you will meet plenty of people who did not drive in from Greenville that morning. They came from the lake. Families own and rent houses on Lake Keowee for exactly these Saturdays: friends in on Friday, the lot on Saturday, the boat on Sunday.
The Cliffs at Keowee Springs is the closest of the Cliffs coves to Clemson, about twenty minutes, with a family Beach Club and its waterslide, a new clubhouse above the eighteenth, and a Fazio course laid out in three six-hole loops. We know the cove well. We represented the buyers on a Keowee Springs home that sold for more than six million dollars.
In case you missed it, our Home Tour walks another Keowee Springs home, this one on the water, from the dock to the top floor. It is the game-weekend house, start to finish.
Or start with the Keowee Springs field guide, which says it plainly: if you have school-age kids or you bleed orange, this is the cove.
Send Someone a Saturday
Game-day denim, Clemson edition
Every Weekend Escape is built to be forwarded. Send this one to the friend who keeps promising to finally do a home game, the alum who still plans the fall around the schedule, or the Gamecock in the family, who will read every word looking for something to argue with.
If a friend sent you this one, welcome. The Escape lands every Saturday at 8 AM, and it is complimentary.
That is a Clemson Saturday, from the lot at sunrise to the long way home. And if there is a market you want planned, reply and tell me where. The most-requested Saturday gets written.
Damian Hall, Editor
SOUTHERN ESCAPES
The intelligence layer between where you are and where you belong.
Southern Escapes is the market intelligence platform of Damian Hall Group, the principal-led luxury team operating under Blackstream | Christie's International Real Estate. The Weekend Escape is for informational purposes; verify hours, parking and kickoff times with the venues before you go. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons (cover, sundown and Howard's Rock; CC0 and CC BY-SA 2.0), the Esso Club, and friends of Southern Escapes, all used with permission. Special thanks to Kristen, Julian and Hadley :)