CLEMSON – In the last month, three of Clemson football’s social media posts have featured players. Some familiar, some are new standing atop or running up a familiar hill. 

Each post in the trio shows pictures and videos of Clemson players sprinting up the hill, known as one of the campus “dikes” each Friday morning. 

One video showcases cornerback Ashton Hampton dashing in front of the group on a sprint to the top, with defensive coordinator Tom Allen and Director of Football Strength and Conditioning Dennis Love screaming raspy praises in the background. Another slideshow showcases both running back Gideon Davidson and linebacker Sammy Brown leading the pack in another early-morning cardio session.

The challenge came, in part, from offensive coordinator Chad Morris emphasizing the need for better conditioning to run his high-powered offense coming out of spring practice. With “tempo,” practice periods that are designed to test game-readiness.

“From the spring to now, the big focus point is we’ve got to be in shape and we’ve got to be ready to go,” Morris said. “And I know that Coach Love and our strength staff have done a great job this summer of getting those guys and taking the lead from me and from Coach [Dabo] Swinney and coordinators and what our needs are going into summer and building on that. That’s been impressive to watch our guys.” 

Since the beginning of the summer, when strength and speed became the utmost priority ahead of this year’s fall camp according to Morris, the hill sprints have been public knowledge to Clemson fans who follow the team’s social accounts, or to any potential walkers out early on Friday mornings.

Recently, Love–the architect of the challenge–gave The Clemson Insider an inside look at the purpose of the specific tradition, outside of the conditioning piece.

“It’s just kind of a mindset deal,” Love said. “I know that some of those guys probably aren’t capable of doing it physically, but just finishing.

“We want to transfer that over to the field,” he added. “Sometimes when you’re battling in the trenches at the line of scrimmage, a lot of it is just being tough and then just finishing. It’s kind of football, tough and then finishing.”

With the intent to finish each sprint, regardless of position, Love implements different time constraints based on each position. For the linemen, 27 seconds are allotted to climb the 50-foot hill. The “mids,” as Love called the linebackers and defensive ends, get 22 seconds, and the skill players have 20 seconds to mount the dike that overlooks Lake Hartwell.

“Giving them time to get up but we also got to take into consideration the type of energy system that you’re working,” Love said. “That’s a pretty aggressive energy system just to climb the hill so you’re gonna need more time to rest.”

Overall, the Tigers have completed eight weeks of summer training with Love, leading up until their fall camp’s commencement on Aug. 6. Each Friday, the players run two more sprints than the week prior.

That means that this Friday, in the last installment of the workout, Clemson players will sprint up the hill 16 times, running 800 feet uphill in as many as seven and a half minutes or as few as five and a half minutes.

The final number, 16, holds a special meaning to Love.

“That’s how many games it takes to get to the national championship,” he said. “So each week represents something.”

For a team that could have over 10 different starters, the national-championship-themed challenge has helped the 2026 Clemson team bond.

After all, what brings people together more than adversity?

“I feel like a lot of the new guys have done a great job of wanting to buy into the chemistry,” quarterback Christopher Vizzina said. “One of the things that has helped is running the dikes, which they haven’t done in a while, and so we’re back to doing that and we’re struggling together, doing those and workouts this summer.”

With the sprints and summer behind them, Clemson will begin two weeks of fall camp, just one month ahead of its season-opener against LSU on Sept. 5.