Clemson and bowl games

This post originated as an email to my brother, Gus Hartley.

I said [in an earlier text to Gus] that I have a soft spot in my heart for the Sun Bowl. When I was a kid growing up in the Seventies, there were far fewer bowl games than there are now. There were the big four--Rose, Orange, Sugar and Cotton--and then there were a handful of other bowls, including the Gator Bowl (first played in 1945), the Tangerine Bowl (1946; now called the Citrus Bowl), the Liberty Bowl (1959; first played in Philadelphia, hence the name), the Bluebonnet Bowl (1959), the Peach Bowl (1968), the Fiesta Bowl (1971), and the Sun Bowl, which was first played in 1935 and, with the Orange and Sugar bowls, is tied for the second oldest active bowl in the land, after the Granddaddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl, first played in 1902. (These dates all come from Wikipedia, so they could be slightly off.) There were a lot of other bowls that came and went during that time, so I give props to the Sun Bowl for surviving. It ain't the most prestigious bowl, but since the late Sixties it has attracted major programs, and it has a competitive payout. It's a cool stadium--a horseshoe bowl carved out of the rock in El Paso, hard by the Mexico border. And, of course, it honors the Sun, which I am a big fan of.

So, you could have a good year in those days and still not go to a bowl game. It wasn't until the 1980s, starting with the Outback Bowl, that there started to be a plethora of bowl games that were basically marketing tools, mostly named for commercial products rather than having clever names based on things that go in bowls (like sugar). You look at storied programs like Alabama and Michigan, and even they didn't go to bowl games every year the way they do now. Frank Howard coached at Clemson for thirty years and won 165 games, but he only took six teams to bowl games. But when they did go to bowl games, as often as not they were the Orange and Sugar bowls.

It was also in the 1980s that bowls started accepting corporate sponsorships. The USF&G Sugar Bowl. The FedEx Orange Bowl. The Rose Bowl has the gravitas to have never had a corporate name appear before its own name, always being called (in the era of corporate sponsorship) The Rose Bowl Game Presented by Corporation X. (They call it the Rose Bowl Game to differentiate it from the Rose Bowl proper, which is the stadium itself. There's an old trick question: Which team has played in the Rose Bowl the most often? The answer is UCLA, since the Rose Bowl is their home stadium.) The worst thing is when the corporate sponsor drops the traditional name of the bowl game altogether, which is how we got the Chick-fil-A Bowl for many years. Or the Taxslayer Bowl. 

I'm obviously too young to remember the Frank Howard years. I reached the age of enlightenment in 1970, a year after Frank Howard retired and a year after South Carolina won the ACC and went to the Peach Bowl (which they lost). So, the first years that I remember of college football in South Carolina, neither Carolina nor Clemson went to bowl games. Carolina finally went to the Tangerine Bowl in 75, but they lost to Miami of Ohio, which was embarrassing since this wasn't even a major program. Even the bowl itself seemed like a cheesy version of the Orange Bowl ("Citrus Bowl," for some reason, sounds so much better than "Tangerine Bowl"). Then we went to the Hall of Fame Bowl, which also felt like a cheesy bowl, and lost to Missouri. Then we went to the Gator Bowl and got waxed by Pitt, which was a powerhouse in those days. Then Clemson started going to bowl games again, first in 77, when they too were beaten by Pitt in the Gator Bowl. But then the next year they went back to the Gator Bowl and beat freaking Ohio State, which was a perennial power that usually played in the Rose Bowl and regularly contended for the national championship (which they won in 1968). And they had a famous coach with a famous coach's name, Woody Hayes. Well, Woody didn't take too well to losing to "little old Clemson," so when a Clemson player intercepted an Ohio State pass late in the game to seal the victory, Hayes punched him in the throat! Hayes was fired the next day, ending his storied career.

Then a couple of years later Clemson won the freaking national championship, beating freaking Nebraska in the freaking Orange Bowl. It always happens like this. Carolina had the first surge of success in the Seventies, under new coach Jim Carlen, but even when they showed promise, they usually got killed in their bowl games. Then Clemson comes out of nowhere and beats a traditional power like Nebraska in a prestigious bowl like the Orange Bowl. In the 2010s, Carolina had three 11-win seasons and beat the Tigers five years in a row. But when they played for the SEC championship in 2010, they got their doors blown off by Auburn. And since Spurrier left we've mostly sucked again. Then Clemson comes out of nowhere and not only starts winning but starts regularly beating traditional powerhouses and winning national championships. What I'm saying is, even when Carolina is good, they look like they're doing it with smoke and mirrors, and when Clemson gets good, they are genuinely good. 

I grew up pulling for the Gamecocks and so I naturally hated Clemson. As we age we mellow and now I like Clemson and hope they keep on winning. Dad's second wife, Frances Lawton, was the daughter of a man who played for Clemson back in the day. He must have played for Frank Howard. I don't actually remember his given name. His nickname was "Streak" (Streak Lawton), because he played running back and was supposedly fast, although I have never been able to find anything on his career as a player at Clemson. [I have since learned, via the Clemson football media guide, that Streak Lawton earned letters in football at Clemson in 1935 and 1936. This means he would have played under head coach Jess Neely; Frank Howard was an assistant coach on those teams. Streak's son Winston lettered in 1969.] Anyway, he was wealthy, and for the few years that Dad was married to Frances we all went to the Carolina-Clemson game whenever it was played at Death Valley (I think we went to two). The adults had seats in the stands, and we four boys sat on the Hill. I proudly wore my Gamecock colors, but Clemson won both games that I went to. At one game, I caught the football on an extra point attempt or a field goal. Okay, I didn't catch it outright, but nobody did, and I caught it on a couple of bounces and threw it back down to the field. I would have only been about ten at the time, and I remember that football feeling like it was about the size of a pumpkin! After I threw it back, I caught sight of my girlfriend at the time, whom I didn't realize until that moment was also on the Hill, down below me. She gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. I felt like a total badass.