Note: The following appears in the Syracuse football gameday program.
When George Bennett needed some help transporting family members from Nashville, Tenn. to Houston, Texas for his son Jeff’s wedding in 1985, he made a phone call.
He called one of his friends in the country music industry…Kenny Rogers. The three-time Grammy award winner, who was later inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, came to the rescue by not only letting him borrow his concert tour bus, he instructed his drivers to take the Bennett family on the trip.
Noted sports television broadcaster Paul Kennedy, who was doing Vanderbilt football and basketball games at the time, made the trip on that bus.
“I slept on the floor of that bus on that trip. That’s how beloved George Bennett was in the country music industry when he worked at Vanderbilt.”
Bennett was beloved at every turn in his career in athletics. That certainly was the case in his over 70 years as perhaps the greatest ambassador of Tiger athletics and Clemson university in history.
Head Coach Dabo Swinney documented how much Bennett meant to Clemson during a meeting with the media in August after Swinney visited Bennett when he was in hospice care in Seneca.
“I have been around George Bennett a long time. He is a true ‘Clemson Man.’ People that have been around Clemson for a long time know the impact that he has had. There are so many things that he has directly impacted, from traditions, branding…you name it.”
Bennett’s impact on Tiger athletics and the university date to when he was a cheerleader in the 1950s. He persuaded his father to buy a small cannon that would be fired after Clemson scored a touchdown. His father had seen it done at an Army West Point game. After his father told him of the tradition, the son said to his father, “That is a great idea…why don’t you buy us a cannon?”
That tradition celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2024, and Bennett was on the field when the cannon was fired as the team ran down the Hill.
After graduating in 1955, Bennett served two years in the U.S. Army at Fort Knox, Ky. In 1957, he started a nine-year career with the Esso corporation. He returned to Clemson in 1967 as the first alumni field representative in the history of the Clemson Alumni Association.
Four years later, Bennett moved to the athletic department as an assistant athletic director. In that capacity, he became involved in fundraising.
In 1977, he was IPTAY named executive director. Over the next two years, it exceeded the $2.3 million mark in fundraising for student-athlete scholarships for the first time, and IPTAY members grew from 9,800 to over 15,000.
During his first year as executive secretary of IPTAY, he developed the idea to have Tiger fans use $2 bills when they traveled to the 1977 Georgia Tech game in Atlanta. The Yellow Jackets wanted to end the series with Clemson to play a lesser opponent, and using $2 bills was a way to demonstrate the economic impact Atlanta would miss if Georgia Tech did not play Clemson.
“I got the idea and went to Charley Pell (Clemson’s head coach at the time) and said, ‘Here is what we need to do if it is ok with you. We are going to take $2 bills down there and we are going to show the people in Atlanta how much money they are missing by doing this.’ We publicized, wrote letters about it, put it in the IPTAY Report and told them to take $2 bills with them.”
Clemson fans responded and still carry on the tradition today for road contests, especially bowl games.
In 1979, Bennett was named associate athletic director for financial development at Vanderbilt. Just five years later, he was named national fundraiser-of-the-year.
In 1986, Bennett returned to the Palmetto State as the athletic director at Furman. Two years later, Furman won the Division I-AA football national title, still the only one in school history.
Bennett returned to Nashville in 1989 as vice president for development at Baptist Hospital. He remained in that a position until 1993, when he returned to Clemson as IPTAY executive director. He remained in that position until he retired in June 2004.
Bennett won many awards during his career. He was inducted into the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame in 1986 and received the Clemson Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award in 1999. In 2001, he received the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor.
I would be hard-pressed to think of any administrator who has had a longer lasting positive impact on Clemson athletics than George Bennett.
