Clemson weighing new look for football stadium hill seating area. Here’s what we know
Notable changes could be on the horizon for The Hill, one of the most recognizable features of Clemson football’s Memorial Stadium.
Clemson is considering a construction project that would add amphitheater-style seating to The Hill ahead of the football team’s 2023 home opener. The change is for safety reasons, an athletic department spokesperson told The State.
As part of the university’s “Memorial Stadium, East End Hill, Stormwater and Safety Renovations” project, which is currently receiving bids, Clemson would add eight tiered levels of student seating on the left and right side of its iconic hill while maintaining the grass as well as the middle opening where the team runs down, according to project drawings released March 28.
A spokesperson said the proposed change, which wouldn’t affect the hill’s seating capacity of roughly 2,500 students, came amid a collaborative effort to improve student safety.
Clemson’s athletic department, campus safety office, student affairs office and university police department — as well as the university’s fire marshal — all provided input for the pending plan, which is specifically intended to negate potential fallout from two common crowd surges in the hill area.
Those surges happen when students rush to the bottom of the hill when the area first opens before games, and when they rush the bottom middle portion of the hill after the team completes its run into the field minutes before kickoff. Both surges have led to injuries in previous seasons, per the spokesperson.
Outside of adding tiered seating to reduce crowding at the bottom of the hill, the plan would improve entrances and stairwells leading into the area and slightly decrease the slope of the hill. As per usual, students would be free to sit or stand while watching games from the hill.
The construction plan also calls for handrails, which will border the centrally located steps between tiers on both sides of the hill and extend out another 10 feet or so. Each of the proposed tiers are about 10 wide feet and will border the approximately 21-foot middle flat area (where the team runs down) on both sides of the hill.
Outside of a short hiatus in the 1970s, Clemson’s players and coaches have been running down ahead of home games at Memorial Stadium since 1942. In 2016, ESPN announcer Chris Fowler described the tradition, which also includes each team member touching Howard’s Rock pre-run, as “perhaps the greatest entrance in sports.”
Clemson’s proposed hill changes — which would convert the area into the type of amphitheater-style setup one might see in a public park — are being folded into a larger project that will also improve and update the university’s stormwater drainage system. (The main part of that system runs under Memorial Stadium.)
The construction project doesn’t technically require approval from the Clemson board of trustees, according to a spokesperson, but athletic director Graham Neff will likely brief board members on the change during their regularly scheduled April 20-21 spring quarterly meeting.
Assuming a bid is secured under a normal timeline, Clemson would start work on the hill and stormwater renovations project in May 2023 and finish it around July 2023, well ahead of the football team’s Sept. 9 home opener against Charleston Southern.
The construction project isn’t directly tied to the university’s Phase 2 Memorial Stadium renovations, which started late last year, but will run in conjunction with them.
As part of Phase 2, Clemson is updating its home football locker rooms, cutting a new tunnel entrance to those locker rooms on the west (non-hill) side of the stadium and redoing the Rogers Family parking lot, home of the pregame Tiger Walk routine.
Phase 1 of Clemson’s $70 million Memorial Stadium improvement plan was completed ahead of the 2022 season and featured, most notably, the installation of the eighth-largest video board in the country.
Clemson fans, responding to the potential hill changes after a fan account brought them to light on Twitter, had mixed reactions.
“Please make it stop. Stop changing literally everything.”
“I don’t hate this……”
“I actually don’t mind this. The hill hasn’t been what it was for a long time now. It was at its best when it was general admission. I remember going and getting a $10 hill ticket as a kid. And that hill would be packed.”
“This is a horrible idea.”
Clemson football spring game
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
Where: Memorial Stadium, Clemson
Watch: Streaming on ACC Network Extra
This story was originally published April 6, 2023 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Clemson weighing new look for football stadium hill seating area. Here’s what we know."
