The best word to describe game day in Clemson, South Carolina, is family.

Imagine a town filled with 300,000 of your relatives where you are greeted with a handshake, a smile, and a cold drink and a warm plate at nearly every turn.

Nestled between the banks of pristine Lake Hartwell and the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, the panoramic views are breathtaking, too, especially as late summer turns to autumn and the leaves on the trees shed their green for a splendid array of amber, russet and gamboge.

From the moment you see the Tiger Paws painted onto Highway 28 leading into town, you get the sense that Clemson is special.

Yes, Clemson on game day is a welcoming place, with heaping portions of passion, pageantry, and southern hospitality, served best on a Saturday Down South.

Frank Howard Memorial Stadium, better known as Death Valley, holds 81,500, and it is every bit as loud and proud as it is reputed to be. Clemson is a small town, with not quite 18,000 full-time residents, but as proud locals note, Death Valley on a game day becomes the 5th-largest city in South Carolina.

The party extends beyond the stadium. Clemson welcomes over 300,000 to town on game days, and hospitality is extended to all, with folks from all walks of life breaking bread and offering a smile, spanning religious, socioeconomic, and racial lines as they cheer on the Tigers.

Need a bite to eat before you tailgate? The Esso Club will take care of you– try the meat and three as you soak in succulent Carolina barbeque (the classic South Carolina mustard based and neighboring North Carolina’s sweet vinegar based styles will do) and one of the best social scenes in college football, right across the street from Death Valley.

Or just do what I did at my first Clemson game and introduce yourself to a Clemson fan, tell them you are visiting Tigertown for the first time, and sit back and enjoy the southern hospitality and home-cooked meats, collard greens, sweets and other offerings served at buffet-style tailgate setups equipped with neatly decorated tables featuring finely crafted table cloths and orange and purple candelabras. At Clemson, they take tailgates almost as seriously as they take Sunday church services.  I promise you’ll be offered food and plenty of friendly banter.

If you have time, walk toward the banks of Lake Hartwell and catch the orange flags on countless pontoon boats waving like dots on the sun-soaked lake. It’s a scene that you can’t replicate on any campus in the south outside of Knoxville’s Vol Navy, and one that reminds you that on Saturdays around Clemson, Tigers football is the sun around which life orbits.

As kickoff approaches, make sure to head into Memorial Stadium early for the famous pregame festivities.

Clemson’s players run down “The Hill,” a steep incline that leads to the field, making a grand entrance into the stadium as the early-arriving Clemson crowd roars in appreciation. Before the run down “The Hill,” Tigers players touch “Howard’s Rock” for good luck. The rock is named after former Clemson coach Frank Howard, who received the rock as a gift from a friend who visited the real Death Valley in the 1960s.

The players and coaches that touch it are said to receive good luck in exchange for their mutual promise to give 110% to Clemson on the field. It’s a bucket list moment for any college football fan and as Clemson’s famed “Tiger Rag” fight song plays in the background and emotion swells around you, it’s easy to see why it is not to be missed. Clemson also offers a host of game day experiences to fans who can pose for pictures with the rock.

Clemson fans also honor their past during the singing of the alma mater. As a salute to Clemson’s early military days, students and alumni still wave their hands in the air with thumbs folded underneath as though holding a cap, an homage to the military salute that brings the Clemson past into the present.

Once the game starts, the Clemson family is known to bring the noise.

Florida State’s storied head coach Bobby Bowden called Death Valley “one of the loudest and most fearsome environments in college football,” and under head coach Dabo Swinney, the numbers bear that out. Clemson won 40 straight games at home until its win streak was snapped in November 2022, and the Tigers have lost just 2 times in Death Valley since 2013, an astonishing run of success.

Clemson’s students and alumni take their football seriously, but they do it with warmth, welcoming all visitors to Clemson with a smile and hospitality even though in the end, the Tigers are likely to win.

The family feel of Clemson makes any trip to Tigertown unique, but it’s the combination of family and the pride the place takes in playing tremendous football that make gamedays at Clemson so special.