Note: The following appears in the LSU football gameday program.
When the two-game series between Clemson and LSU was announced, fans for both teams reopened the debate…which school adopted the name “Death Valley” for its home stadium first?
I am not writing this story to start a fight in the stands tonight. I am merely recapping the story as I know it.
Clemson’s “Death Valley” moniker actually has ties to the 1932 Olympics and a long roadtrip by a future Presbyterian head football coach. Lonnie McMillian was the colorful head coach at Presbyterian from 1941-53.
Before he became the head coach of the Blue Hose, he decided he would drive to Los Angeles for the Olympics, which were in the United States for just the second time and the first time since 1904, when St. Louis was the host city.
On the way, McMillian made a stop in Death Valley, California to see the original. The most memorable part of the trip was the oppressive heat.
Fast forward to 1945, when McMillian brought his Presbyterian squad to Clemson to face Frank Howard’s football team for a Sept. 22 matchup.
Similar to that day in Death Valley, California, it was 95 degrees in Clemson that afternoon in 1945, and his Presbyterian team “got killed” 76-0. Clemson had lost to the Blue Hose in 1943, when the World War II effort took Clemson’s entire junior and senior classes. So there was a distinct revenge motive for the Tiger players.
According to Presbyterian sophomore Cally Gault, who would later be the head coach at Presbyterian from 1962-84, McMillian talked to his team in the summer of 1946 about playing at Clemson to open the season.
In an interview in 2016, Gault said the following.
“After we were beaten so badly in 1945, Coach McMillian and the players referred to the Clemson trip as going to ‘Death Valley.’ I’m not sure when the media picked up on it.”
Gault also told of a story that gives further credibility as to why McMillian referred to it as “Death Valley.”
“I remember during the 1945 season (when Presbyterian had a poor year) that somebody in California sent a newspaper clipping to us about a team out there that Presbyterian should play, because both teams were struggling. The writer suggested that these two winless teams (at the time) should meet in Death Valley and call it the ‘Futility Bowl’.”
Clemson was not as dominant in the 1946 game, but it did beat a Presbyterian squad 39-0 that would finish 7-2.
According to “Death Valley Days,” authored by my predecessor, Bob Bradley, McMillian did not call it “Death Valley” in the media until the 1948 opener.
Even though Bradley was still seven years from being Clemson’s sports information director, his writing is credible, because he was the editor of the Clemson student newspaper, The Tiger, that year. He saw every Clemson game, home and away. He spent so much time covering the Tigers that fall that he flunked out of school at the end of the semester. He returned to earn his degree in 1951.
Bradley became Clemson sports information director in October 1955. He referred to Memorial Stadium as “Death Valley” more than his predecessors. In his advance press release for the Sept. 22, 1956 game against Presbyterian, he used the moniker for the first time. The first sentence in the third paragraph stated the following.
“Coach Bill Crutchfield of the Blue Hose will bring a heavy squad to ‘Death Valley’ in an attempt to knock the Tigers off their high preseason pedestal.”
Bradley told me that Howard called it “Death Valley” because it added to the stadium’s mystique and could have an intimidating effect on the opposition.
The LSU side of this story ironically has a tie to Clemson. According to Bud Johnson, LSU sports information director from 1966-71 (watch any documentary on Pete Maravich and you will see him), the SEC Tigers started calling their home stadium “Death Valley” after LSU beat Clemson in the 1959 Sugar Bowl and won its first national championship.
In an article prior to the 2019 season national championship game between Clemson and LSU, Johnson told The Post and Courier when asked who can claim being the first “Death Valley,” “I’m an LSU fan, but I side with Clemson.”
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. Both programs have won over 73 percent of their games at their respective stadiums. The home-field advantage is a big reason LSU and Clemson are 12th and 13th, respectively, in wins in Division I history and are both ranked in the top 10 entering tonight’s game.
