Auburn with a lake?

It's Auburn-Clemson week. SEC vs. ACC. ESPN gameday crew coming to the Plains. National recognition for both schools. Similarities abundant. A renewed rivalry that ended in the early '70s. And it reminds me of one of my favorite writers.

The late Lewis Grizzard ranks alongside my all-time favorite southern writers. His genre was journalistic satire and humor. He was an award winning syndicated columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was thrilled when he moved there from the Chicago Tribune. To use his words, he had been “held hostage as a prisoner of war” in the frozen north until Atlanta called him home.

Grizzard began his profession as a sports columnist, and is often credited with the description that “Clemson is just Auburn with a lake.”

Grizzard’s analysis would be correct if one only looked at the similarities. In fact, it is very difficult to describe the two schools WITHOUT looking at the similarities. Both are State Land Grant Institutions. The schools have comparable architectural design. The layout of each school is extremely similar. Then, to top it off, both schools use the Tiger as it’s mascot with orange as one of it’s predominant colors.

While it is true that both schools have these analagous commonalities, including counting John Heisman as one of their early coaches, Grizzard’s analysis is incorrect.

Clemson is NOT Auburn with a lake. Fact is, without Auburn, there would be no Clemson football.

In 1892 Walter M. Riggs graduated from A&M College of Alabama (later to become Auburn University) with bachelor of science degree in engineering. Being class president, director of the school glee club, and member of Phi Delta Theta, Riggs was a campus leader. He was also a member of the school’s first football team.

Riggs became a graduate assistant coach at his alma mater rather than pursuing a career in mechanical engineering. He was so competent and enthusiastic about coaching the Tigers from Auburn that in 1895, he was assigned the duty of finding a new head football coach. He found John W. Heisman (of the Heisman Trophy lore) growing tomatoes in Texas and brought him back to The Plains for a salary of $500 per year.

The following year, Riggs left the Auburn Football Team in the capable hands of Heisman, and accepted the job of beginning a football program in Clemson, South Carolina. The college had no mascot, they had no colors and they didn’t even have any uniforms. Auburn agreed to help out the upstarts from South Carolina, and they gave Riggs some practice jerseys (some orange and some navy) to take with him. The jerseys had been washed so many times using Number 2 washtubs full of lye soap and washboards that the navy jerseys looked more pale purple than blue. Because the orange didn’t fade as easily as the navy when washed, Riggs chose orange as the dominate color for his new team.

Riggs brought the Tiger name with him, and called his new football club “the Clemson Tigers”.

Without Auburn, the Clemson football club would never have been orange and purple. It never would have been the Tigers. It probably never would have begun a football program in 1896, and John W. Heisman would have never left Auburn to coach at Clemson.

Historians have noted that Walter Riggs is the “Father of Clemson Football”. If that be so, then Auburn is the grandfather of Clemson Football. And that’s a heck-of-a lot more than just Clemson without a lake!