Why is Texas stadium playing Clemson hype video? Explaining logistics for CFP game
When the Clemson football team plays on the road, coach Dabo Swinney and the Tigers usually jog out of the visitors’ tunnel with little to no fanfare.
That’ll change on Saturday in Austin.
Don’t get it twisted: The Tigers’ first-round College Football Playoff game at Texas this weekend is a true road game. Swinney’s said as much, and Clemson is expecting to play in front of a capacity crowd of 100,000-plus fans at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium — most of them sporting burnt orange.
Texas is currently a 12-point betting favorite for the first ever meeting between the schools. The winner advances to play Arizona State in the Peach Bowl.
But since the CFP — and not Texas — formally governs Saturday’s game and all the games in the 12-team bracket, there’s one interesting pregame tweak.
As part of guidance issued to teams hosting first-round playoff games, Clemson as the visiting team was given an option to have a more formal, neutral-site style team runout at Texas’ stadium and play a hype video on the video board while they enter.
The Tigers plan to do it, an athletic department spokesman told The State.
It’s a small but notable tweak to the meeting between No. 5 Texas (11-2) and No. 12 Clemson (10-3) and other first-round games being played Friday and Saturday.
Texas, the SEC runner-up to Georgia, will get all the benefits generally afforded to a home team. Per CFP rules, the Longhorns only had to provide Clemson’s athletic department a 3,500-ticket allotment at DKR Stadium, which seats 100,119 people.
UT will also go through its regular pregame sequence, traditions and team runouts just like it does at any home game — with a minor carve-out for Clemson.
“It will be very similar to a typical Texas home game with the exception of the option of the intro video for Clemson,” a UT spokesman told The State.
A College Football Playoff spokesman added that while the CFP governs the game, host teams (in this case, Texas) will run all game operations. Outside of offering the visiting team an intro video, the CFP said the only other change is “the removal of any sponsor logos or advertising” at the stadium or during the game.
“Everything else will run as a typical home game for Texas,” the spokesman said.
Not a neutral site
Running out with a hype video will give Clemson’s entrance at Texas a similar feel to how the Tigers ran out for the Aflac Kickoff Game against Georgia against Atlanta, and for the ACC championship game against SMU in Charlotte.
Both of those games were classified as neutral-site games and provided equal treatment to both teams in terms of ticket allotments, in-stadium signage, pregame entrances, how the end zones were painted (one for each team) and so on.
But an established pregame runout is the extent of the CFP-mandated accommodations Clemson gets as the visiting team in Austin this weekend.
The general sense is the College Football Playoff wants to reward the teams that earned the Nos. 5-8 seeds (and hosting privileges) with true home games.
For the visiting team, this new college football postseason setup mimics a true road game more than it does, say, the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball, baseball and softball tournaments. In those brackets, national seeds host the opening weekend at home sites but every game is treated like neutral-site games.
No. 10 Indiana, which is playing a first-round game at No. 7 Notre Dame on Friday, has also reportedly confirmed its plans to do a pregame runout with a hype video. (That news prompted some frustration from Fighting Irish fans on social media.)
Plans for No. 9 Tennessee (playing at No. 8 Ohio State) and No. 11 SMU (playing at No. 6 Penn State) weren’t immediately clear, but the pregame runout is generally viewed as a positive and something visiting teams would say yes to.
Penn State coach James Franklin addressed the changes Wednesday.
“Obviously, it’s a home game for us, but the College Football Playoff pretty much runs everything else,” Franklin said. “So it will not feel like it normally feels to us playing a home game at Beaver Stadium. But obviously, we’re glad to be at home, so we’ll take it. It’s the structure that exists, and we’re going to embrace it.”
Here are a few more logistical notes for Clemson, which is making some history as one of 12 teams to compete in the first expanded College Football Playoff and one of eight to participate in the first-round, on-campus games:
Clemson’s travel and practice schedule
Under Swinney, the Tigers have gotten used to playing in College Football Playoff and/or high-profile bowl games, usually with a month or so of preparation.
This year, “it’s very different,” Swinney said Monday.
Clemson has had a quicker-than-usual turnaround after the ACC championship and will end up going just two weeks between the conference title game and its first postseason game. Usually, the break is three or four weeks.
As such, Swinney said, Clemson treated last week like an open week, or bye week, as opposed to a more extended break. And this week’s been a “normal week of prep.”
“As far as the intensity of it and the feel of it? Yeah, that feels exactly the same,” Swinney said, comparing the 12-team CFP to the four-team playoff that Clemson made six straight appearances in from 2015 to 2020. “That feels exactly the same. I mean, there’s an edge that’s unique. That part is the same. The process to get to it is very different, because the system is different.”
The most significant change to Clemson’s schedule this week: The Tigers, who usually travel for road games on Fridays, will fly to Austin on Thursday night instead. Clemson is expected to arrive at its team hotel around 9 p.m. local time.
The Tigers will do a walk-through at Texas’ stadium on Friday.
“It’ll take a little bit of the burden off, because a lot of people are going,” Swinney said. “The whole team’s going, wives are going, all that stuff. So, a little more of a burden on the travel. We’re going to get out there and get situated.”
How many tickets did Clemson get from Texas?
The Tigers athletic department received an allotment of 3,500 tickets from Texas for Saturday’s CFP game, a spokesman confirmed. That number was consistent with what the other road teams for this weekend’s other three on-campus playoff games got from home teams.
The allotment is about 800 fewer tickets than what Clemson generally gets for ACC road games (about 4,300). Per usual, the athletic department has discretion to distribute those tickets as it pleases among traveling staffers, band members, player/coach family members, and guests and donors.
For Saturday’s game at DKR Stadium, Clemson has a portion of its allotted tickets in the lower bowl area and another section in the upper bleachers. (That’s a standard setup for a visiting team ticket allotment, and mimics what Clemson does.)
With fewer tickets available than usual, Clemson decided it won’t travel its full, roughly 350-student Tiger Band for the Texas game. A smaller pep band will travel instead and sit in the upper deck. Clemson’s band is not expected to perform at halftime, though the Tigers did have the option to perform if they chose.
For ACC road games, Clemson usually distributes about 1,100 tickets among staff, player/coach family, and guests and band members before giving the remaining tickets to IPTAY, the school’s athletic fundraising arm. IPTAY distributes remaining tickets among its members based on who requested them and their priority status.
Clemson followed a similar model to distribute tickets for the Texas game.
Clemson-Texas tickets on the open market start around $110 per ticket in the upper deck and range from $350 to $500 in various lower bowl spots, per SeatGeek.
College Football Playoff schedule, TV
First-round games Friday and Saturday
- Friday: No. 10 Indiana at No. 7 Notre Dame, 8 p.m. (ESPN/ABC)
Saturday: No. 11 SMU at No. 6 Penn State, noon (TNT)
Saturday: No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Texas, 4 pm (TNT)
Saturday: No. 9 Tennessee at No. 8 Ohio State, 8 p.m. (ESPN/ABC)
This story was originally published December 19, 2024 at 6:30 AM.
