re: Critiquing the SEC's stadium nicknames

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LSU not only shares a common mascot with Clemson, it’s often been disputed whose stadium is the “real” Death Valley. I’ve had online forum discussions on this topic with several fans. One attended LSU in the 70’s, and claimed to have followed the team since the late 1950s, said “It was Death Valley when I started school, it was Death Valley as far back as I can remember.” So who has dibbs on the nickname Death Valley?

It is commonly accepted that the original nickname of "deaf valley" was used to distinguish Tiger Stadium from Clemson University's Memorial Stadium which was called “death valley”.

It all sounds plausible, except for the fact that Tiger Stadium opened in 1924 with a seating capacity of only 12,000- hardly deafening. Clemson didn't become known as Death Valley until the late 1940s when the Presbyterian College coach used the phrase about Clemson's stadium.

The late Lonnie McMillian, former football coach at Presbyterian College, told sports writers in 1948 that he had "to take his team up to Clemson and play in death valley" where they rarely scored or gained a victory. The nickname stuck to an extent, but when Clemson Head Coach Frank Howard started calling it that in the 1950s, the nickname really caught on.

Furthermore, Clemson didn’t begin promoting the name until the 1950’s. This time frame is significantly after confirmed reports of Tiger Stadium being known as "Death Valley; therefore, there would have been no need to distinguish Tiger Stadium form Clemson’s stadium.

Former Advocate sportswriter, Carl Dubois, had a story on October 8th of ’07 in which he wrote of the late LSU AD, Paul Manasseh, having insisted LSU’s Tiger Stadium was never meant to be known as Death Valley and, because of the crowd noise, even before LSU added upper decks, was initially meant to be called Deaf Valley.

This line of thinking sits well with fans who believe the ABC Saturday night primetime telecast of the December 5, 1970 massacre of Ole Miss marked the beginning of the new nickname taking root. They claim that during LSU’s 61-17 route of Ole Miss, announcers Chris Schenkel and Lee Grosskupp erroneously referred to Tiger Stadium as "Death Valley,"


The story of announcers’ mistaken reference is supported in the book, Eye of The Tiger - 100 years of LSU football. In it we are told "The name Death Valley was used first at Clemson, and picked up by LSU when the original term Deaf Valley was not properly enunciated, and misunderstood." Most fans accept this belief.

As for Clemson, the term "Death Valley" comes from the fact that Clemson University's Memorial Stadium is physically situated in a valley. Furthermore, considering the university cemetery sits on a hill that once overlooked the field before the upper decks were constructed, it’s easy to see how the name Death Valley could have evolved.


Some things about Tiger Stadium that are not disputed among LSU fans: The preferred appellation is Death Valley. There is no better place to be on a Saturday night than a place that, in terms of general population, would be the sixth-largest city in Louisiana.

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Because OP made up nicknames for most schools so that he could say death valley was best even though Clemson was first called Death Valley in 1945, and LSU started calling theirs Death Valley after playing Clemson in 1959

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Clemson: In 1945, Presbyterian’s football coach bestowed the nickname “Death Valley” on Clemson’s Memorial Stadium because of the unyielding heat that reminded him of the real Death Valley desert in California. Former Clemson head coach Frank Howard further cemented the nickname in 1966 by putting a rock from the actual Death Valley on a pedestal atop the hill above the east end zone - which players rub before each game to this day.

LSU: Tiger Stadium was allegedly called “Deaf Valley” because of the stadium’s deafening noise but, as former LSU sports information director Bud Johnson told The Advocate, morphed into “Death Valley” after LSU and Clemson played each other in the 1959 Sugar Bowl.

“No one called it Death Valley here until after we played in the Sugar Bowl,” Johnson told The Advocate.

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not to mention, our stadium kinda isn't called the jungle

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