September 14

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September 14

  • 1863: Richard Newman Brackett, Ph.D., born this date. Served as an associate professor of Chemistry at Clemson Agricultural College until his death on November 27, 1937.
  • 1915: New students arrive on campus. "All day and until mid-night last Tuesday, members of the senior class were busy helping to welcome new men to clemson [sic]. A committee was appointed to meet all trains to give directions as to hacks, trunk checks, etc. In front of the main building these newcomers were met by another squad of seniors who helped them in every possible way with their matriculation and showed them to their respective halls in barracks, where they were turned over to the members of another committee and were shown to their rooms. Members of the senior class were glad of this opportunity to extend a hearty welcome to the new men." (The Tiger, "New Students Royally Received - New Students Arrive - Received Royal Reception at the Hands of Senior Class", 21 September 1915, Volume XI, Number 1, page 1.)
  • 1954: The Registrar's Office announces that the current enrollment at Clemson College is 2,612 students. Of this number, 829 are new students who entered in June or September, and 1,783 are students who were previously enrolled. (The Tiger, "Registrar's Office List Students Enrollment for '54", Thursday, 16 September 1954, Volume XLVIII, Number 2, page 1.)
  • 1961: Walter L. Lowry, Jr., Clemson faculty member since 1949, department head of civil engineering from 1951 to 1960, and dean of engineering from 1960, dies unexpectedly at the age of 54. Lowry Hall will be named for him. (Reel, Jerome V., "The High Seminary Volume 1: A History of the Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina 1889-1964", Clemson University Digital Press, Clemson, South Carolina, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9842598-9-2, pages 427, 462.)
  • 1962: An accidentally intercepted phone call from University of Georgia athletic director and former football coach Wallace "Wally" Butts to University of Alabama head football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, reveals (later) that the opening game of the 1962 season on September 22 between the two schools, played at Legion Field in Birmingham, has been thrown by Butts' giving Bryant confidential information about the Bulldogs' play strategies. The final score of 35-0 by 'Bama is the most lop-sided outcome since 1923. The betting line favored Alabama between 14 and 17 points. As the truth comes out, the University of Georgia's athletic board meets on February 23 and confronts Butts with the testimony of the man who had inadvertently heard the damning conversation. Butts refuses to take a lie-detector test. The following day, newspapers report that Butts has resigned immediately "for purely personal and business reasons." An investigation into the Southeastern Conference follows. (Graham, Jr., Frank, The Story of a College Football Fix, The Saturday Evening Post, 23 March 1963, Volume 236, Number 11, pages 80-83.) Butts filed a libel lawsuit against the Saturday Evening Post after it ran an article alleging that he and Bear Bryant had conspired to fix games. Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, as it ultimately became when it reached the Supreme Court, was a landmark libel case. The court ruled in his favor in 1967, and the Saturday Evening Post was ordered to pay $3.06 million to him in damages, an amount which was later reduced on appeal to $460,000. This settlement was seen as a contributing factor in the demise of the venerable Saturday Evening Post two years later. Both Butts and Bryant had sued for $10 million each. Bryant settled for $300,000. It was revealed during the trial that although George Burnett took notes while he listened to the call, the magazine wrote the story without ever seeing them. The court found that the magazine had rushed the story to print when it heard that other outlets might publish it, and had not verified the claims. This is not to say that the story was wrong. James Kirby, now a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, represented the SEC as an observer at the trial in Atlanta, and wrote "Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal" (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1986), in which he detailed the magazine's poor defense of its case, the changing definition of libel at the time, and the damning failure of the NCAA to take any action against the principals of the case. The Bleacher Report website ranked this scandal as number 1 in the Top Ten College Football Scandals of all time. (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/289624-countdown-to-shame-top-10-scandals#page/11)
  • 1965: Student Health Services provides flu shots in the student lounge, 7th level above the Loggia.
  • 1974: The Tigers open the football season with a roadtrip to College Station, Texas, to face the twentieth-ranked Texas A&M Aggies. Clemson fans listen grimly to the Tiger Sports Network as broadcaster Jim Phillips describes the ignominius 24-0 shut-out.
  • 1975: Wildwater Unlimited Rafting Trip on the Chattooga River leaves from the parking lot in front of Mell Hall, 8 a.m. Free Flick at the Y Theatre features Mutiny on the Bounty and Jane Eyre, beginning at 8 p.m.
  • 1977: In one of the most lurid cases of violence in Clemson history, two armed Lawrenceville, Georgia brothers break into a Charleston Avenue student apartment about 11:40 p.m. and assault two sleeping residents, one of whom is sexually mutilated and whom the attackers are angry with for dating the older brother's ex-wife.
  • 2007: Jo Dee Messina performs live on the lawn at Littlejohn Coliseum at 7 p.m. Clemson's own Lee Brice opens the show. The Oconee Community Theatre in Seneca presents "The Sound of Music" - music by Richard Rogers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. For information, call 864-882-1910.
  • 2007: September 14-September 16 - The Clemson Little Theatre presents "The Foreigner", a play by Larry Shue, in which the mysteries unfold in this funny yet cryptic trek amongst the Georgia pines. This is the first performance of the Clemson Little Theatre's 2007-2008 season. Pat Shull directs.
  • 2019: Number 1 ranked Clemson travels to play unranked Syracuse, at 7:30 p.m. on ABC. It had appeared that Syracuse would host ESPN’s GameDay program for the first time until they were defeated by Maryland, 63-20, on September 7. Clemson dominates, 41-6, in front of Syracuse’s Homecoming crowd, the third largest in Carrier Dome history. Clemson (3-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) has won 18 straight games, a school record and the longest streak in the nation. It's the second-longest winning streak by an ACC member in conference history, trailing a 29-game run by Florida State from 2012-14. Clemson also won its eighth straight true road game and won a 13th consecutive ACC regular-season game for the third time in school history (20 from 1981-84, 14 from 2015-16). The win is also the 100th for the Tigers since the start of the 2011 season, the year that began Clemson's active eight-year streak of consecutive 10-win seasons. Clemson is 99-15 since 2011.


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