The number of students sitting on Clemson’s iconic hill Saturday was smaller than I’ve seen in a long time, and plenty of blame has been thrown around. Head coach Dabo Swinney blamed the fire marshal, the students blame the athletic department and fans and coaches blame the students.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle of all of that.
We’ve made several calls since Saturday to get a feel for the exact cause of the student attendance problem – there were huge gaps in the student section midway through the win over Boston College a few weeks ago and the left side of the hill was almost empty when the Tigers ran down it before this past Saturday’s game against Wake Forest.