When did you get hooked on Clemson football?
Our newest contributor, Houston Burnett, tells us how he got hooked on Clemson football.
Greetings and salutations, Clemson Nation.
This serves as my official introduction to the Rubbing the Rock community, so I wanted to make my first article something that gets some interaction with the fanbase. Don’t get me wrong, I will have plenty of takes for the upcoming 2022-2023 year. However, considering we’re 5-6(ish) weeks from the doldrums of sports summer, I figured it would be much easier to put a little different spin on my first few pieces while Marty, Beef and Chancey continue to provide quality content on what is happening in Clemson for spring 2022.
Like I said, this article begs for audience participation, and so if I see a 37-tweet thread answer to this question I won’t mind. The question is simple:
“What got you hooked on Clemson?”
And look, your answer might be simple. Maybe it wasn’t a choice, and you were born into it. Maybe you just saw a shirt and liked the paw. Maybe your Great Uncle’s cousins twice removed fourth husband’s friend pulled for them and you thought you would too.
There is a litany of answers, but I thought to kick things off I would just give you the first episode of my Clemson origin story. There is a reality in the great space time continuum where something could have prevented me from being a fan. It sounds ridiculous, and the reason would be ridiculous. Let’s rewind the clocks back about 27 years to the year 1995 and I’ll explain.
Picture this: 5-year-old me being dragged away from finishing watching the afternoon block of Disney cartoons (that I’d waited all week for) to go watch my older brother’s football team. It was a weekly sense of dread that I experienced for 2 years. Not for the football aspect, the Chapman Panthers had a magical run to the region title in ‘95, finished 12-1, and went back to the playoffs in 1996.
No, dread for me was one singular item. Something that made me tune out what was going on in the field of play and cry like…. well…. a 5-year-old would. Something that nearly led to me tantruming my way out of going to my first Clemson game.
What was this horrible, terrible thing? Air Horns.
I know that sounds absolutely insane but let me paint the picture. Back in the mid-90’s (and most of the 2000’s), Chapman didn’t play at particularly big venues. My family sat in the same spot every week. We had pretty great seats on the 2nd to top row by the press box so my dad could stand up the entire game (it was and still is his thing). It just so happened that on the top row was the one guy in all of Inman, South Carolina that had what seemed like a bullhorn (ok, that’s an exaggeration but I was 5, so indulge me).
Of course, this guy somehow sat by us at every single game. It didn’t matter if the game was at home, or in Spartanburg, or Blacksburg, or Chesnee. He was always there.
Fast forward to the fall of 1997; the concept of college was new to me. My older brothers had all gone to sleepaway camp so I assumed that day in August that my oldest brother would be coming back for dinner that night and not staying at this place called “Calhoun Courts”.
Much to my chagrin, he wasn’t coming for dinner and, even more to my dismay, the next time we would see him would be at this new-fangled event called “Family Weekend”. To hear that we were going to another football game, a bigger football game, I knew I had to get out. I feared we were walking into an army of rogue air horn blowers that would torture my ears.
But as much as I begged and pleaded, the day came. We were going to Clemson.
I also didn’t know where Clemson played. Sure, I had seen them on TV, but my understanding of football at that time was that, unless it was the NFL, everyone played in slightly larger stadiums than Chapman.
My mouth was agape at the sight of Death Valley. The Air Horn Doomsday clock was at midnight, and buddy I was about to cause a scene.
I specifically remember right as we got to our seats, an announcement went out. An announcement that would forever change the trajectory of my life.
“Clemson Memorial Stadium is a tobacco free environment; we also prohibit noise makers such as airhorns”
Hold up, what?
No air horns? You mean I can watch this game in peace? Well let’s see what this is all about.
And literally, from that point, I was sold. Hooked. I was the newest customer, and I loved the product. I had never actually watched football, so to see the spectacle, the pageantry, the sheer size of such an event had me mesmerized. And this was just for a UTEP game.
Clemson won 39-7. I truly had never felt that way before. A team that presumably I now cheered for had just dunked on these poor peasants from El Paso and I was a part of the experience. I talked about it for weeks and, naturally, I jumped at the chance to go again when the #2 ranked, Mack Brown led, UNC Tar Heels came to town a few weeks later.
So there you have it, Tiger Nation- Episode 1 of this saga that has led me to where I sit now, typing about what is going on in Clemson. And the best part about it? Getting to know Clemson got better as time went on. I’ll have more of these types of articles throughout the summer and look forward to putting them out.
Until next time, I have a question:
What got you hooked on Clemson?