1982

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1982 in Clemson History

Notable Alumni


Events in 1982

  • Field hockey and the Men's and Women's Fencing teams are dropped as sports by the university.
  • The Western Sizzlin’ steak house is opened by the Elbayadi family, located at 898 U.S. 123.
  • Clemson Alumnus Larry Abernathy is elected Mayor of the City of Clemson, an office he will hold until his death on February 11, 2012.
  • January 1: Clemson Football itinerary: Wake-up at 10 a.m. Brunch at 10:30 a.m. Private showing of a movie at the Omni at 1 p.m. Pregame meal at 4 p.m. Bonus Squad to rooms, travel squad taping and meeting. Depart Dupont Plaza Canter for Orange Bowl at 6 p.m. Arrive at Orange Bowl dressing room at 6:30 p.m. Game time at 8 p.m. Team party after the game. Staff party after the game. No curfew.
  • January 1: The Clemson Tigers, wearing orange pants and jerseys, defeat the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 22-15 in the Orange Bowl for a 12-0 undefeated season, clinching the university's first National Championship. Clemson is only the third team unranked in preseason to attain the top slot in the Associated Press final poll since 1953, Louisiana State in 1958, and Minnesota in 1960. Ironically, LSU's final game of that season was an 0-7 win over Clemson in the January 1, 1959 Sugar Bowl. In 1983, Miami will achieve the same result, as will Brigham Young in 1984. No others do, through 2007.(Reference - Boyles, Bob, and Guido, Paul, "The USA Today College Football Encyclopedia", Sideline Communications Inc., New York, ISBN 978-1-60239-331-8, page 16.)
Coincidentally, "Eye of the Tiger", a song performed by the American rock group Survivor, and taken from the album of the same name, is released on this date. It had been written at the request of Sylvester Stallone for the film Rocky III. The original mix of the song, heard in the film, features tiger growls, though the single omits them.
  • January 2: Football team has breakfast and lunch at the Dupont Plaza, Miami, Florida. Buses depart for party at 6 p.m. Orange Bowl Team Party at Indian Creek Country Club, 7 p.m.
  • January 3: Buses for football team depart Miami for Clemson at 10:30 a.m. All to be checked out of the Dupont Plaza by noon. (Reference: All Orange Bowl trip data is from "1981 Orange Bowl Itineraries", Clemson Athletic Department, prepared by Burt Henderson.)
  • January 11: Tiger player Perry Tuttle is featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine after his touchdown catch in the National Championship game against Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
  • January 12: Snow begins falling during the evening and by the next day three inches are on the ground, with more in the forecast. The university closes down for two days. Redfern Health Center subsequently reports 125-150 snow-related injuries ranging from minor scrapes and cuts to broken bones. (Gibson, Monica, "Snow Causes Unexpected Holiday", TAPS 1982, Volume 72, pages 76-77.)
  • January 21: Clemson Day is declared by the South Carolina State Assembly to honor the Clemson Tigers undefeated National Championship football season that was capped off with the 22-15 victory over the University of Nebraska in the the 1982 Orange Bowl in Miami.
  • January 23: First Fan Appreciation Day is held on a rainy morning with the football team and Coach Danny Ford meeting hundreds of Tiger fans under the stands in Death Valley. (Puldy, Michael L., "Coach Of The Year: Danny Ford", TAPS 1982, Volume 72, page 192.)
  • January 27: The Clemson University Concert Series presents the Branko Krsmanovich Chorus of Yugoslavia, "one of the World's Few Truly Great Vocal Ensembles," in Tillman Hall Auditorium at 8 p.m. Bogdan Babich, music director, with Darinka Matich Marovich, associate conductor.
  • January 27-January 28: A blast of Arctic weather covers the southeast and Atlantic seaboard. Heavy snow falls in the Carolinas and Georgia and Alabama and stays on the ground for several days. Air Florida Flight 90 crashes into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. during this storm.
  • February: A former student who vandalized the Reflection Pond in 1978 by driving a front-end loader into the pond is arrested in USMC boot camp after foolishly writing a taunting letter to the university. It is the evidence needed to confirm his identity.
  • February 5: The Atlanta Rhythm Section, with opening acts McGuffey Lane and Nantucket, appear in Littlejohn Coliseum. (TAPS 1982, Volume 72, pages 92-93.)
  • March 5: John Belushi, original cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live, and renowned for his role as Bluto Blutarsky in National Lampoon's Animal House, is found dead in his room at Bungalow number 3 of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The cause of death was a speedball, a combined injection of cocaine and heroin. He was 33.
  • March 11-March 12: Tina Krebs wins the national championship in the 1,000-meter run at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, at the NCAA Women's Indoor Track Championships. Krebs becomes Clemson's first woman national champion regardless of sport. The Lady Tigers finish 10th as a team.
  • March 12: After the death of his first wife on October 2, 1980, Alan McCrary Johnstone remarries, to Eva Dorrity Welling.
  • March 19: Randy Rhoads, 25, lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, is killed in 10:30 a.m. crash of Beech Bonanza F35, N567LT, c/n D-4144, at Leesburg, Florida. The plane crashed into a house after a wing clipped Ozzy Osbourne's tour bus. The pilot was fooling around and attempting to to buzz the bus. All 3 aboard killed including the pilot and Rachel Youngblood, the band's hairdresser.
  • March 29: The NCAA begins an investigation into practices of the Clemson football program and officially notifies the university on this date, the second major inquiry into Clemson's athletic programs in seven years under director of athletics Bill McLellan. (Wunder, John R., "The Good Sport: Walter Thompson Cox, 1985-1986", "Tradition: A History of the Presidency of Clemson University", McKale, Donald M., editor, Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1988, ISBN 0-86554-296-1, page 250.)
  • April 24: Tenth annual Bengal Ball, sponsored by CDCC, is cancelled due to lack of ticket sales caused by the Administration's decision to move the event into the football stadium. The Marshall Tucker Band, Pure Prairie League and Papa John Creech were scheduled to perform.
  • May: Former men's basketball Coach Tates Locke, (1970-1975), publishes book, Caught in the Net, giving his version of his involvement in the recruiting scandal that put the Clemson basketball program on probation in 1975.
  • June 1: The Norfolk Southern Company is created by the merger of the Southern Railway and the Norfolk & Western Railway.
  • July 1: Joy Smith succeeds Susan G. Delony as Dean of Student Life.
  • July 24: "Eye of the Tiger", by Survivor, tops the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks from this date. Tiger Band's stands folder will never be the same!
  • September 6: Number eleven-ranked Clemson opens season with televised night game at seventh-ranked Georgia, losing, 7-13.
  • September 10: The First Friday Parade, this year named "Bash the Birds", is held, but moves to a new route along Highway 93 instead of through downtown. Also new local town alcohol laws prohibit the carrying of beverages along the parade route. Tiger Band debuts its version of "Eye of the Tiger". A pep rally follows the parade in the Amphitheatre. (TAPS 1983, pages 26-31.)
  • September 11: Sixteenth-ranked Clemson ties Boston College, 17-17, in Death Valley.
  • September 25: The Tigers host Western Carolina, win, 21-10.
  • October 2: Clemson hosts Kentucky, and wins, 24-6. Kentucky will go 0-10-1.
  • October 9: The Tigers road trip to Virginia, win, 48-0, in a night game.
  • October 16: Twentieth-ranked Clemson hosts Duke, winning, 49-14.
  • October 23: The eighteenth-ranked travel to Raleigh, defeat N.C. State, 38-29.
  • October 30: Originally scheduled date of the Wake Forest game, before it was moved to November for play in Japan.
  • November 6: Thirteenth-ranked Clemson hosts North Carolina, defeats the Heels, 16-13.
  • November 8: The Clemson University Concert Series presents the Chamber Orchestra of Turin (Solisti della RAI di Torino), an ensemble of 15, Antonio Janigro, director, in Tillman Hall Auditorium, at 8 p.m., a Columbia Artists presentation.
  • November 13: Eleventh-ranked Tigers defeat eighteenth-ranked Maryland Terrapins in College Park, 24-22.
  • November 20: Tenth-ranked Tigers put the hurt on the unranked Gamecocks in Death Valley, 24-6.
  • November 21: The football program at Clemson University is placed on probation for a 2-year period to include the 1983 and 1984 seasons. This sanction was enforced on the program by the NCAA Committee on Infractions due to a lengthy history of recruiting violations to gain an athletic advantage that had taken place from 1977 through the Tigers' 1981 National Championship season and into 1982, under the administration of two head coaches, Charlie Pell and Danny Ford. This gives rise to such jokes as "Clemson - the best team money can buy," and "IPTAY stands for 'It's Probation Time Again Y'all.'" (TAPS 1983, Volume 73, page 220.)
  • November 23: President Bill Atchley holds a press conference to discuss the NCAA probation.
  • November 27 (November 28, Tokyo time): The tenth-ranked Tigers defeat Wake Forest, 21-17, in the Mirage Bowl, played in Japan. Clemson finishes with 9-1-1 season record, 6-0 in the ACC for the conference title. The probationary Tigers are ineligible for post-season play but are ranked eighth by the Associated Press final poll.
  • November 30: Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" is released. It remains the best selling rock-pop album of all time, with between 47 and 109 million copies sold, depending upon whose statistics you believe. First entering the Billboard charts on December 25, it will stay in the top 40 album list for 91 weeks, 37 of them at number one, and at its peak sells a million copies a week. The only record with a longer stay on the l.p. charts is the soundtrack to "West Side Story" with 54 weeks at number one during a 144-week stay in the top 40, but it sold fewer copies overall than "Thriller".
  • December 2: First airing of Michael Jackson's 13-minute long "Thriller" video, directed by John Landis. At its peak, MTV aired the video twice an hour to meet demand.



1981 The 1980's 1983