The way it should be: A night game against LSU in the original Death Valley

The game will be the first true home football game with the new sod, the new railings, and alcohol sales inside the stadium.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Tuesday, May 13 2025

The next time the Clemson Tigers run down the iconic hill, it will be in the twilight of a late summer day, the stadium lights not quite taking effect, with 82,000 screaming fans cheering them on.

It won’t be the Bananas, the last team to run down the hill, but it will be bananas.

The news broke Tuesday that Clemson’s season opener against LSU on August 30th will kick off at 7:30 pm and will be the ABC Primetime Saturday night game. We still don’t know about College GameDay – the big Ohio State/Texas game kicks off at noon and will be the Big Noon Kickoff on FOX. Alabama at Florida St. will kick off at 3:30 pm, and because this marks the last game for GameDay legend Lee Corso, there is a thought that his final appearance will be at his alma mater, even though the Clemson/LSU game has more juice.

The game will be the first true home football game with the new sod, the new railings, and alcohol sales inside the stadium. Fans will begin to tailgate long before kickoff – some of them will arrive in the dark of an early morning – and the atmosphere promises to be rowdy, raucous and loud.

Clemson and LSU have never met in regular-season play. All four of the previous contests between the two schools have come in postseason play, including bowl games following the 1958 (Sugar Bowl), 1996 (Peach Bowl) and 2012 (Chick-Fil-A Bowl) seasons.

Clemson and LSU first met on the gridiron on Jan. 1, 1959, when Frank Howard’s ACC title-winning squad culminated its 1958 campaign against LSU in the Sugar Bowl. The two programs met in an instant classic in the 2012 Chick-Fil-A Bowl, as Clemson drove 60 yards in 10 plays — including a key conversion on fourth-and-16 — to set up kicker Chandler Catanzaro’s 37-yard field goal as time expired in a 25-24 Clemson win.

Clemson will make its return trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to face LSU on Sept. 5, 2026, as each school gets to try out the other “Death Valley.” Both schools are fiercely and proudly protective of that name, but Clemson’s Memorial Stadium was first called Death Valley in the 1940s by Presbyterian coach Lonnie McMillan.

From 1944 to 1951, McMillan and the Blue Hose lost to the Tigers eight times in a row to start the season, scoring only 13 combined points in that stretch. McMillan compared the season-opening losses played in South Carolina’s September heat to the geological Death Valley in California.

Howard took the nickname and ran with it, and one of his friends gave him a rock from the California Death Valley several years later. That rock, now known as Howard’s Rock, sits atop the hill in Memorial Stadium.

LSU reportedly didn’t pick up the Death Valley name until 1959, when the Bayou Tigers defeated Clemson in the Sugar Bowl to win the national title. LSU claimed the nickname as a bowl trophy.

As for this year’s contest – Clemson is an early trendy pick as a top-five team (ESPN has them as high as No. 2 and has LSU at No. 6), and while the loser is not out of any title picture, the game has meaning for a Clemson program that lost three games to SEC teams last season – Georgia in the opener, at home against South Carolina and on the road in the College Football Playoff against Texas.

A four-game losing streak to that conference, coupled with a schedule not ranked as one of the toughest in the country? You know what that means.

But what we know now is that it will end under the lights on what promises to be a balmy, sultry night. The way it should be.