It was perhaps the best 50 cents Sam Blackman has ever spent. That’s how much it cost Clemson’s long-time senior associate athletic communications director to get into the 1977 clash between No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 15 Clemson.
The 50-cent ticket got Blackman, then 15 years old, a seat on Clemson’s famous hill in the east end zone.
“It was so packed in we could barely move,” he recalled.
More than 54,189 fans packed into Death Valley on November 12, 1977 to watch their Tigers taken on Joe Montana and the Irish. At the time, it was the most fans to ever witness a football game in Clemson.