Who has college football’s real Death Valley: Clemson or LSU?
In August 2018, when Clemson and LSU announced a home-and-home football series for 2025 and 2026, the inevitable question arose: Which team would claim the mantle of the “real” Death Valley for its stadium?
Now, with the two squads set to meet in the College Football Playoff championship next Monday, that question is being raised again.
The official name for Clemson’s home venue is Memorial Stadium. For LSU’s, it’s Tiger Stadium. But both have long been known as Death Valley, and both programs’ fan bases are fiercely protective of the moniker.
When it comes to the actual history of it all, however, there’s a common consensus of who had the nickname first: Clemson.
According to ESPN and Hero Sports, Clemson’s Memorial Stadium was first called Death Valley in the 1940s by Presbyterian coach Lonnie McMillan. From 1944 to 1951, McMillan and the Blue Hose lost to the Tigers eight times in a row to start the season, scoring only 13 combined points in that stretch. According to Clemson football’s media guide, he compared the season-opening losses played in South Carolina’s September heat to the geological Death Valley in California.
Clemson coach Frank Howard embraced the nickname, leading to one of his friends gifting him a rock from the California Death Valley several years later. That, of course, eventually became Howard’s Rock.
LSU, on the other hand, reportedly didn’t pick up the Death Valley name until 1959, when the Tigers defeated Clemson in the Sugar Bowl to win the national title. Having defeated the team from the original Death Valley, LSU claimed their stadium’s nickname as a prize.
“No one called it Death Valley here until after we played in the Sugar Bowl,” former LSU sports information director Bud Johnson told Hero Sports.
There’s an alternate theory, based on a gas station near the stadium in Baton Rouge. According to ESPN and the Charleston (SC) Post and Courier, the owner Crowe Peele either nicknamed his own station or the stadium Deaf Valley because of the ear-splitting noise that emanated from fans. With a Cajun drawl, “deaf” could easily have become “death.”
However, the timing of that gas station name is unclear and would still give Clemson’s “Death Valley” the edge in history.
In 2010, LSU public address announcer Dan Borne wrote a poem called “Saturday Night in Death Valley,” according to The Advocate, cementing Tiger Stadium’s nickname.
As for which stadium gets louder? Well, that depends. LSU’s fans famously got so loud in 1988 against Auburn that it registered as an earthquake on a nearby seismograph in a science lab.
But Clemson’s fans have hit a decibel level of 132.8, according to 247Sports, roughly equivalent to a military jet taking off from 50 feet away, and just ahead of LSU’s 130.
This year, Stadium polled 130 FBS coaches about the hardest place to play, with Tiger Stadium checking in at No. 1 and Memorial Stadium at No. 2. Various other lists ranking the toughest venues to play in for opposing teams have included LSU and Clemson near the top.
Two Death Valleys
LSU’s Tiger Stadium
Capacity: 102,321
Opened: 1924
Surface: Grass
Record attendance: 102,321
Home team record: 431-151-18
Clemson’s Memorial Stadium
Capacity: 81,500
Opened: 1942
Surface: Grass
Record attendance: 86,092
Home team record: 316–102–7
