"The Hill"

The Most Exciting 25 Seconds in College Football

The Hill is an banked slope on the east end of Clemson Memorial Stadium where the football players enter the field before a game. The players start by warming up on the field and then go to the locker room on the west end of the stadium. They then load up on buses which drive them around the stadium to the east end, where they gather at the top of The Hill. Once a cannon goes off the players run down and towards their sideline to wait for the game to begin.

The run down The Hill originated out of necessity. When Clemson Memorial Stadium was opened in 1942, the locker room was located in the Clemson Field House, which was right down the street from the Hill that led to the east end zone. Clemson would get dressed, walk down the street, and run down the hill so they could get to the field and warm up.

in the mid-1960s a man named Sam Jones gave Clemson Head Coach Frank Howard a rock from Death Valley, CA as a gift. After years of sitting in his office, Howard told his assistant to "throw it over in the valley". The assistant then made a podium for the rock and set it on the top of the valley. The players then began the tradition of rubbing the rock and running down the hill before the game.

When Hootie Ingram followed Frank Howard as Head Coach in 1970, new locker rooms were put on the west end of the stadium. Coach Ingram logically ended the tradition and ran out from the locker room. Clemson had a home record of (6-9) during this time. In the final game of the season, senior Ben Anderson approached Coach Ingram about running down the hill before facing South Carolina. Ingram liked the idea and arranged a bus to pick them up at the west end of the stadium and drove them to the top of the hill at the east end. Clemson would win that rainy day 7-6 and has ran down the hill ever since. Prior to the 2019 football season, Clemson Football has run down the field 402 times. Sports broadcaster Brent Musberger has coined it as the "Most Exciting 25 Seconds of College Football"

Here is a link to the ESPN broadcast of Clemson's entrance before their 2013 game against Georgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df6KzOd_X_U

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