Introducing Your Week 1 Opponent: Clemson Tigers

With less than 2 months until kickoff, it’s time to roll through the upcoming FSU schedule, with introductions and little-known, untrue facts about the Noles’ opponents in 2007. Enjoy.

Clemson University was founded by Jimmy Bob Clempsin in 1889 as a loose collective of corn and corn whiskey researchers. Under the aegis of agricultural scholarship, Jimmy Bob had gathered some of the best in the alternative distillery field to his farmlands in rural South Carolina, and began receiving funds under the Morrill Act and Hatch Act. These Acts provided much needed funding for what the US Government considered valuable psychoethanolic studies, more colloquially known as “moonshinery.” As condition for federal funding, the name of the university had to be altered to ‘Clemson’, in order to make it, as described by James Collingsworth Iptay (Deputy Secretary of the newly formed Department of Agriculture) “less goddamn hillbilly-like, for Lord’s sake.”

Jim Bob Clempsin, laying out his psychoethanolic curriculum.

Iptay was also the predominant force in starting Clemson’s athletics program. In 1896, he paid Walter Riggs $150 and 3 gallons of Clempsin’s Finest Lightning Water to steal the “Tigers” mascot from Auburn University and smuggle it to South Carolina. (Auburn was forced to rename their teams ‘War Eagle, Motherfuckers,’ although they continue to use a sideline mascot described as “an orange and black-striped predatory cat.”) In an astonishing coincidence, the student supporters of the Clemson athletics programs, although they didn’t know the last name of their mascot benefactor, dubiously stumbled onto his acronym when they dubbed themselves IPTAY, which stands for I Pilfered the Tiger from Auburn, Y‘all.

Some of the most notable past coaches of the Clemson Tiger football team are John Heisman, Frank Howard, Danny Ford and Timmy Jeffy Terry Mikey Jimmy Billy Tommy Bowden. It is a little-known fact that Howard was a teammate of Bear Bryant at Alabama and thus carried an eternal grudge against Heisman, who, like the tiger mascot, had been poached from Auburn in 1900. Praying to the Immortal Gods of Football Justice, Howard summoned a meteor to descend from the Heavens, which struck and killed Heisman in 1904. This space rock is still on display in the football stadium officially named for Howard, and locally known as “Death!! Look at how it mercilessly descends upon the head our legendary football coach, who innocently stands on the sideline of the football field, located in this idyllic Southern valley!” The name was shortened to Death Valley two weeks after its adoption.

Howard posing with his prayer-summoned Holy Death Rock From Outer Space.

Currently, the Clemson football program holds the record for most Atlantic Coast Conference titles, winning the league title 37 times. It should be noted that Clemson was the sole member of the conference from 1939-1953, when it was decided to include other schools in conference play. In recent years, Clemson has stifled Florida State on the field, winning 3 of the past 4 games which the media calls ‘Bowden Bowls’, referring to the head coaches of each team. Actually, these games are decided months in advance during the Bowden family retreat on the Gulf shores of Florida, where the entire Bowden clan engages in pitched battles of physical stamina, weapons proficiency and psychological fortitude, known to the rest of the world as Strip Checkers.

The Bowdens prepare for battle.

This year’s contest will be the season opener, played in Clemson on Labor Day. Many observers have said this is a fortuitous match-up, considering many South Carolinians have no prior relationship with Labor, in either its physical or literary form.

~ by Halleck T. on July 10, 2007.