Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Orange (the color) (11/19/09)
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TITLE: Go Tigers | Previous Challenge Entry
By Justin Atkin
11/24/09 -
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I had been going to football games all of my life with my dad. He was the biggest Clemson fan to ever live and he bred into me a love for orange and white. One of my earliest childhood memories was when my father told me that I would be put up for adoption if I ever pulled for the South Carolina Gamecocks. Don’t laugh. He meant it! For years he had me believing that “my blood runneth orange.” It wasn’t until my brother bloodied my nose in a game of backyard football that I came to the realization that my blood was the same color as a Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket or a North Carolina Tar Heel. What a disappointing day. So much of my childhood was spent with my father at Clemson football games.
The 1998 season started like most of the rest. Clemson rolled over Furman, the perennial in-state push over, 33-0. Then it all went downhill from there. My dad and I sat through horrible games in which Clemson was whipped by Virginia Tech and Virginia. Even Wake Forest and North Carolina beat our Tigers. My dad took to me to Tallahassee, Florida so that I could watch the Florida State Seminoles slay the Tigers 48-0. Week in and week out, we watched our Tigers compile the worst record they had ever had in my lifetime. However, we stayed faithful as we had always been. The next to last game of the season had arrived. It was a unique game because Clemson was playing Georgia Tech on a Thursday night instead of the normal Saturday college football day. That was the only game I ever remember my father leaving early. He always cursed the fair-weather fans who left early because the Tigers were playing awful. But midway through the third quarter he had gotten an emergency call over the stadium loud speaker. He was directed to the stadium police station where an officer told him that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center had a liver awaiting him and he needed to go to the Anderson Airport immediately. I didn’t tell you my father had came to this particular game awaiting a liver transplant. The doctor said he had less than two weeks to live without a new liver. We rushed to the airport as we listened to Georgia Tech hand Clemson their eighth loss of the season, 24 -21.
And there I sat at the last game of the season, November 21, 1998, without my dad. Clemson was 2-8 as they rumbled onto the field that night to face their in- state rivals. Daddy had taught me early on that only one game mattered to a true Tiger. It wasn’t the league championship. It wasn’t the coveted end of year bowl game, nor was it the National Championship, which Clemson won in 1981. The whole success of a season hung on whether or not our warriors in orange defeated the Gamecocks. This was the first Clemson game I had ever been to without daddy. He couldn’t make it. He was barely hanging onto life in the ICU. The doctors said it wasn’t hopeful, but we weren’t giving up. He was a Tiger! Needless to say, as I watched the Tigers beat the University of South Carolina, tears rolled down my face.
As I write this, over a decade has passed. In four days the Tigers and Gamecocks will face each other once again. However, I won’t be there. I haven’t been back to a Clemson- Carolina football game since that night in 1998. Go Tigers!!!
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