Mount Pleasant Magazine Sept/Oct 2019

49 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.BestOfMP.com | www.ReadMPM.com feature Clemson’s Tiger S tudent Gabby Hays is known as the first to don The Tiger suit when he made its inaugural appearance in 1954, and Jay Williams is credited as the first Tiger Cub (also referred to as Cubby), a smaller version of The Tiger who arrived in 1993 and is The Tiger’s nephew. The Tiger is the yellow-eyed mascot’s official name, and he unquestionably is the big man on campus while he ranks among the Top 10 mascots and appears in ESPN promos. On the other hand, Cubby arguably gets a little more latitude and acts sillier. At football games, only The Tiger is permitted to perform pushups after Clemson scores — one pushup per point. When Clemson scores again — and most recently they’ve been scoring at will — the mascot, placed on a platform in a corner of the stadium, does a pushup for every point on Clemson’s side of the scoreboard as the student section yells the count. “We have one returning student who is the primary mascot and one or two new students in training,” said Tori Palmer, Clemson’s spirit program coordinator. There are tryouts with former mascots serving on the panel. It is a process that involves reactionary skits, communicative skills (via gestures) and a pushup evaluation, in addition to height restrictions and the appropriate attitude. Interestingly, there are records kept for the number of pushups performed by The Tiger. Ricky Capps holds the single-game record of 389 pushups, while Jon Potter marked 1,549 during the 2000 season, and Mike Bays performed 2,216 career pushups from 1994-97. Longtime Clemson athletics staffer John Seketa compiled a book in 2015 called “Clemson Through the Eyes of The Tiger.” In that work, each student who donned the costume chronicles a specific game or circumstance that made his time as The Tiger most memorable. Chris Carter, who was The Tiger in 1977-78, was part of the cheerleading crew that put an orange letter on white poster board that spelled C-L-E-M-S-O-N, and a cheerleader was assigned to a respective seating section, signaling the group to yell the specific letter. It didn’t take long after that for the stadium-wide spelling lesson to become a standing tradition. The Tiger owns a complete wardrobe and a world of props with which to utilize. Photo by Thomas Runion.