One of the greatest secrets in Clemson history came in 1980. The funny thing is the secret had nothing to do with a coaching change, an injury or anything of that nature.
Instead, one of the best orchestrated secrets to come out of the Clemson Athletic Department revolved around pants. That is right, pants. In particular, they were the orange pants.
It was in the summer of 1980 when the idea of the Clemson football team wearing orange pants presented itself to then equipment manager Len Gough. That summer, he received several samples of orange plants from several distributors.
Gough, a 1975 graduate of Clemson, was fascinated by the orange pants and he thought they could be used in some way, but he wasn’t exactly sure how they would use them. He brought the idea up to then head coach Danny Ford, who liked the idea, but maybe not for the 1980 season.
After his meeting, Gough did not hear from Ford about the pants for a couple of months. Then one day Ford made his way down to the equipment room prior to the Tigers’ game against Virginia Tech and asked if it was possible to have them available for the South Carolina game, which was seven weeks away.
“I could not give him an answer right away, but we thought we should ask a couple of the players, some we could trust with a secret,” Gough explained in the 2016 book If these Walls could Talk: Stories of the Clemson Tigers.
Ford chose two of Clemson’s most respected players and team leaders, safety Willie Underwood and linebacker Jeff Davis.
“We were totally caught off guard,” Davis said. “We had no idea, but we liked them.”
Ford told Davis and Underwood they might wear the orange pants against South Carolina in the regular-season finale, but they were to be a surprise and for them not to tell a anyone about them.
The two did not tell anyone, sort of. Davis did let the cat out of the bag to his long-time roommate, wide receiver Perry Tuttle. But he made Tuttle swear to secrecy. Tuttle did not say a word. The secret was safe.
Ford finally gave Gough the go-ahead to order the pants the Monday after a 35-33 win at Wake Forest. That was on November 3, 1980, 19 days before the Tigers hosted South Carolina at Death Valley.
At the time, Ford knew his team was going to need a boost to beat the Gamecocks. They were having a great season in Columbia and were likely headed to the Gator Bowl, while running back George Rogers was on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy.
Danny Ford knew his 1980 team was going to need a boost to beat South Carolina, so he broke out the Tigers’ orange pants for the first time. (file photos courtesy Clemson Athletic Communications)
At the time Ford finally made the decision to order the orange pants, Clemson was 5-3 with a home game against No. 14 North Carolina that same week and then a date at Maryland before the annual grudge match against a ranked South Carolina squad.
“We were needing something,” Ford said. “We were stuck in a .500 year with an important game. Momentum was probably not on our side. It was not a good week going into that game and probably needed all the help we could get.”
Gough knew they were going to be cutting it close, so he got the assistance of head trainer Fred “Doc” Hoover involved. Hoover was friends with Hank Spiers, the Vice President of Russell Mills in Alexander, Alabama. They had 19 days to make 120 pants.
However, the cloth to make the pants did not end up at the plant until November 19, three days before the South Carolina game. Russell Mills told Gough the pants would be ready on Friday, the day before the game, so he and pilot Eddie Ambrose flew to Alexander to pick up the pants.
The orange pants were still a secret to the majority of the team and in the Clemson athletic office, as just 10 people knew what Gough and Ford were trying to pull off.
When Gough and the pilot reached Alexander, the pants were still not ready. In fact, they were not ready until 3 p.m., 22 hours before kickoff.
After finally getting the pants back to Clemson, Gough and assistant equipment manager Bobby Douglas washed the pants and then at seven o’clock the next morning they came in and put identifications on each pair of the pants.
Though they had just six hours before kickoff, they did it by themselves because the secret had gone on for so long, they did not want a student manger to ruin the surprise.
Meanwhile, back at the team hotel in Anderson, the football team was finishing its pregame breakfast when Ford got up and spoke to the team.
“We knew something was up, but we didn’t really know what,” said running back Cliff Austin.
A lot of the guys on the team thought Ford was going to tell them he was stepping down as head coach, because following the Tigers’ 34-7 loss at Maryland rumors circulated that Ford was out as head coach.
Instead, Ford pulled out a pair of the orange pants.
“When he did that, the room went crazy,” Davis said. “That’s all the guys could talk about was wearing those orange pants with the orange jersey and the orange helmet and how the fans were going to love it. Coach Ford was a master motivator. He knew how to push the right buttons.
“That moment relaxed us. All of sudden, we weren’t thinking about having to win this game to save his job or about how we were going to stop George Rogers or any of that. We were just looking forward to playing the game.”
Back in Clemson, there was still a few hours before kickoff and Gough and Douglas had already snuck the pants in the locker room where the mangers hung them up in the lockers beside the white pair of pants. The players were to warm up in the white pants to make sure the 64,000 fans, nor the Gamecocks suspected a thing.
Everything was going to plan until one of the managers brought in a man by the name of Paul Coakley into the locker room. Coakley worked for Clemson and was there to pick something up.
“I felt bad for him, but we had to keep him in the locker room until we left the last time,” Gough said.
Gough said Coakley’s eyes grew twice their size when he saw the orange pants so they could not risk him telling someone what was going on because it could get back to the Gamecocks. So, Gough put him in Ford’s interview room for the next hour.
With Coakley secured, the rest of pregame went off without a hitch. The team left the field from warmups five minutes earlier than normal, so they had enough time to change into the orange pants. None of the 64,000 fans at Memorial Stadium or South Carolina had a clue about was about to happen.
“I never quite thought it would have the reaction that it had on the players that it had,” Ford said.
To keep as many fans as possible from seeing the Tigers load the buses in the orange pants to be transported to the top of the hill, Ford had the bus pull up next to the door where recruits hung out. So, the players went through the recruits’ room to get on the buses.
When Clemson got to the top of the hill, the players stayed on the buses until the Gamecocks came out onto the field. They wanted them to see what was about to happen. They wanted them to feel the fans enthusiasm.
When the Tigers finally made it to the top of the hill, dressed in all-orange for the first time, Death Valley became deafening.
“When the fans saw us, they absolutely went crazy,” Davis said. “We knew we were going to win.”
Willie Underwood picked off two South Carolina passes and returned one 37 yards for a touchdown in lifting Clemson to a 27-6 upset of No. 14 South Carolina in 1980. (file photo courtesy Clemson Athletic Communications)
It did not appear as if Clemson was going to win late in the third quarter when the Gamecocks drove the football to the Clemson 16 and was in position to take their first lead of the day. But with 32 seconds remaining in the quarter, Underwood stepped in front of a Garry Harper pass and raced 64 yards down the sideline before stepping out of bounds at the USC 24.
Six plays later, quarterback Homer Jordan called his own number from the one-yard line as the Tigers took a 13-6 lead.
Though Rogers carried the ball 28 times for 168 yards, Clemson kept him out of the end zone.
“I told Jim Carlen, who became a good friend of mine after we both got out of coaching, and I never cared for him much when he was coaching there because we coached against each other. You just don’t do it. You know? And he had the upper hand, too, and that did not make it any good,” Ford said. “But later on, I told him, and I told George Rogers this many times, but there is no telling how bad they would have beat us, orange pants or no orange pants, if they gave the ball to George Rogers on every play.”
But they didn’t.
On South Carolina’s next possession, Harper again tried to go outside with a pass, but the pass was again cut off by Underwood, who this time made sure he did not step out of bounds as he raced 37 yards down the sideline for a touchdown, giving Clemson a 20-6 lead.
“For some reason they wanted to throw two out cuts and Willie Underwood picked them off,” Ford said. “Mickey Andrews [Clemson’s defensive coordinator] was still here then and he just completely believed that a strong safety could get underneath an out cut. That is a long way to travel. I never did believe he could get there if he threw the ball perfectly on the outside shoulder.
“He broke on the ball once and it looked like a replay the second time because it looked like the same play. He proved Mickey right. He could get underneath the out cut and he just turned the whole football game around. Still today, I don’t think we beat them if they don’t throw those two passes.”
It was meant to be though. Prior to the 1980 South Carolina game, Underwood did not have an interception in his first 40 games at Clemson. In his last game in a Clemson uniform he had two.
Was it the Orange Pants?
Underwood finished the game with 17 tackles and was named the National Player of the Week by Sports Illustrated.
Clemson clinched its 27-6 victory over the Gamecocks when Jeff McCall went 15 yards for a touchdown later in the fourth quarter.
The win over the Gamecocks lifted Clemson to its perfect run in 1981, which ended with a 22-15 victory over Nebraska in the 1982 Orange Bowl, sealing the Tigers’ first national championship in football.
Clemson went on to post a 16-2 record under Danny Ford when it wore orange pants.
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