Klubnik says there's nothing like running down The Hill into a sea of orange

Klubnik says Clemson's entrance is insane.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Sunday, January 26 2025

Clemson’s stadium entrance is so iconic that even Georgia had to take a peek.

Clemson football is known for its players and coaches getting on buses on one side of the stadium, busing around to the other side, getting off the buses at Howard’s Rock, and running down The Hill as Tiger Rag is played and 80,000 fans are screaming.

Very few get to experience it first-hand, and quarterback Cade Klubnik is one of those. He says the entrance is insane, in a good way.

“It's insane. I think it gives you a moment to kind of smell the roses too, because you come off the bus,” Klubnik said last week on the Field Talk Podcast with Field Yates. “One of the coolest parts I think is coming around the corner, and kind of seeing the edge of the stadium kind of go away, and then you just kind of see it all open up and then you hop off the bus and you run to the rock, and you're all locking arms and the whole stadium is just, I mean, it's like a sea of orange pretty much. It's insane.”

Before Clemson’s entrance against Georgia in 2013, ABC cameras followed the players and buses for the entire journey, and when the Bulldogs left the visitor’s tunnel several players ran to the bottom of The Hill to wait on the Tigers.

ABC play-by-play announcer Brent Musberger opined that, “even Georgia had to take a peek.”

“It's so cool. And it kind of gives you a moment to really smell the roses up there for about a minute, maybe 45 seconds, finishing the band song and all that, and you're really just looking around,” Klubnik said. “It's pretty cool. And I think that if we didn't get to do that and you really just came straight out of the tunnel, it doesn't really give you a sense of what's really around you at times. You get a little bit of that in warmups, but I don't ever really try to look around and stuff. I'm really just focused on, I don't really try to look in the stands and all that. And then coming down that Hill and running into all of it, I mean, I don't think there's anything like it. There's nothing like it.”

Which stadium stands out, after Clemson?

“I'll say Virginia Tech this year was really cool. That was really sick, Enter Sandman, all that, and that was pretty awesome,” Klubnik said. “It was a really cool environment. It was a really fun game, too. I was one of the captains for that game. We switched captains every week and I was one of the captains of that game, so it was just me and three other guys walking out there when they were really starting the whole thing and the whole song and everything. It was pretty sweet.”