Well, we might as well start the fun immediately, don’t you think? So let’s do as they do in the movies, and start rewinding the hands of time to set up a couple of key flashbacks, as we begin the 14-day journey to the college football championship game, Tigers versus Tigers, LSU versus Clemson.
First stop?
It is Jan. 26, 2017. National Signing Day. At schools like LSU and Clemson — and every other place where college football is equal parts life, love, death, religion, relevance and oxygen — these are the days that define you or destroy you, that push you higher toward the football firmament or assure that you’ll always be the program “looking to improve upon last year’s 5-7 campaign …”
We are inside an office at Jennings High School. Jennings is a school of 880 students in Jefferson Davis Parish — yes, you read that right — and sits 90 miles west of Baton Rouge, home to LSU, which badly wants to land the signature of Jennings’ star running back, Travis Etienne. To that end, there are four baseball caps neatly placed on a table. LSU’s purple and gold is one, of course. Clemson’s purple and orange is another. The maroon and white of Texas A&M is a third. Last is the orange and white of Tennessee.
LSU and Clemson are considered the favorites.
When the time comes for the big reveal. Etienne smiles.
“I’m taking my talents to the real Death Valley,” he says.
Some in the room are confused. Both Clemson and LSU play in enormous, intimidating football stadiums that have been dubbed “Death Valley” for years. There are two things to note here: Many of Memorial Stadium’s best moments are for Clemson day games in the searing South Carolina heat; at Tiger Stadium, the most frightening hours occur at night, after 100,000 or so students and locals have engaged in an epic tailgate for hour after hour.
Also: Both consider their houses of horror to be — quote — “the real Death Valley.”
It is unknown if Etienne is merely engaging in a little signing-day trash talk or if he really knows his history, but facts are facts and this is a fact: Clemson’s stadium has been known as Death Valley since at least 1948, when Presbyterian College coach Lonnie McMillian dubbed it that because his poor Blue Hose kept getting … well, killed there: 39-0 in 1946, 42-0 in ’47, 53-0 in ’48, 69-7 in ’49.
That beats LSU by at least a decade. Until 1958, Tiger Stadium’s alternate nickname was “Deaf Valley” — a tad less ominous, perhaps, but certainly a proper reflection of the raucous atmosphere that was an LSU football game — and remains such. It would be an LSU coach from a later generation who once marveled at the level of noise inside Tiger Stadium: “That was Death Valley. That was the place where opponents’ dreams go to die.”
Most believe it was Jan. 1, 1959, when LSU decided to push the new name. On that day LSU’s Tigers bested Clemson’s Tigers in a 7-0 rock fight in the Sugar Bowl. To the victors went a nice trophy and, apparently, a coveted stadium nickname as the spoils.
The teams’ next postseason meeting on Jan. 13 will almost certainly consist of more than seven total points — figure on maybe 10 times that; the over/under opened at 69.5 on several prominent books. And it will feature, of course, Travis Etienne, who took his talents and a football to the house with less than two minutes to go Saturday in Clemson’s stirring 29-23 Fiesta Bowl win over Ohio State, reeling in the game-winning catch and setting up this meeting of Death Valleys, Tigers and preposterously talented football teams.
Oh yes: They also have the same nickname. So before we finish, let’s crank the clocks and the calendars still farther back in time and settle on Oct. 21, 1936, when a 1-year-old Tiger arrives at the Baton Rouge train station from its birthplace in Little Rock, Ark. His name is Mike. He is greeted triumphantly by a boisterous throng of students and townies. All these years later he is the only live tiger on any campus in the U.S., his habitat located between the track stadium and basketball arena, just across from Death Valley.
Mike I has had six successors since his 20-year reign ended. Mike VII entered the world on Sept. 13, 2016, named Harvey, but after doctors at LSU’s veterinary school deemed him fit to serve he was given his new identity — and happily inherited generations of LSU acolytes who, several times per game, invoke his name while singing the LSU fight song (to the tune of “Hey Look Me Over”), lyrics that seem especially relevant during this high-octane Tigers season:
You’ve got to go for a touchdown
Run up the score.
Make Mike the Tiger stand right up and roar.
ROAR!
Clemson’s mascot is actually a three-student rotation that inhabits the suits of The Tiger and his nephew, The Cub (and you thought Mike was a boring name?). But as Clemson’s own website affirms: “One does not simply become The Tiger.”
Each year, Clemson’s spirit program coordinator, Tori Palmer, and a panel of Tiger mascot alumni hold formal tryouts. It’s a long process involving spontaneous skits, interviews and a push-up evaluation. “Of course,” the site adds, “in addition to meeting height requirements, Tiger hopefuls have to have the right attitude.
“The biggest thing we look for is someone who’s really excited to represent Clemson and who has lots of energy. In-suit, everything has to be exaggerated,” Palmer said.
The teams ought to be evenly matched in New Orleans on Jan. 13. The mascots? I’d have to put my money on Mike VII if it came to that, honestly. Even if it is a two-on-one fight.
