At its best, Clemson’s Memorial Stadium is deafening, and definitely one of college football’s best and most intimidating environments. Former Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer would certainly agree.
In fact, Kizer went so far as to say that Clemson’s Death Valley is the loudest stadium he ever played in.
Kizer recounted that the hostile atmosphere and the stadium’s speaker system were on a different level than anything he had previously experienced at Notre Dame.
He experienced it all firsthand when he and the Fighting Irish traveled to Tigertown for a highly anticipated top-12 matchup on Oct. 3, 2015.
“We pull into the stadium. Still to this day, there was never an experience like it,” Kizer recalled. “I’ve never seen the amount of hatred towards an away team that I saw at Clemson. These dudes are just like, just the look in their eyes – like, we do not want you to be here. And then you get into the stadium – and I’m used to Notre Dame – at the time, Notre Dame, we were just putting our jumbotron up. Jesse Bongiovi [Jon Bon Jovi’s son], a close friend of mine, is on the team. So we got access to the Bon Jovis – that’s the type of music that you get, the type of environment you get at Notre Dame. We get out there [at Clemson], they got a full DJ. This dude’s playing nothing but rap. It’s the loudest speaker system I’ve ever been around.”
The October 3, 2015 matchup between No. 6 Notre Dame and No. 12 Clemson – two undefeated teams entering the game — is famously known as the “Hurricane Game” by Clemson and Notre Dame fans due to severe weather caused by Hurricane Joaquin. The Tigers won, 24-22, stopping Kizer on what would have been a game-tying two-point conversion with seven seconds remaining.
The game was played in a downpour in front of a packed Memorial Stadium. Kizer remembers the crowd noise being so intense that he felt his face mask shaking during his first drive and he felt like he was playing in a Madden video game.
“There’s a hurricane that’s going down, yet the field felt pristine. It was like, what is going on here? This is a different level of football,” Kizer said. “Then you get out there for the first drive. You know in Madden, when it’s really loud, and the screen starts to shake? That’s how loud it was when we were there. I legitimately felt my face mask shaking.”
Kizer redshirted his first season with the Fighting Irish and then emerged as the team’s starter in 2015, throwing for 2,884 yards and 21 touchdowns and rushing for 520 and 10 more scores to lead Notre Dame to a 10-3 record.
A year later, he threw for 2,925 yards and 26 touchdowns before being selected by the Cleveland Browns in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft with the No. 52 overall pick. Kizer started 15 games as a rookie for the Browns and subsequently spent three years as a backup with the Packers, Raiders and Titans.
