A sea of orange has traveled from the beach to the Arizona desert

It has been a long 34 years since brothers and Clemson graduates Carson and Lawton Benton attended the 1982 Orange Bowl, where the Tigers defeated Nebraska 22-15 to claim their only national championship.

The opportunity to watch Clemson play for another NCAA football title has finally arrived, and they weren’t about to let the opportunity pass.

The Bentons are in Arizona for the College Football Playoff National Championship featuring Clemson and Alabama, and they have plenty of company from others on the Grand Strand.

A throng of Clemson followers from the Strand are attending the game at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, and will be responsible for a lot of the orange attire that decorates the stadium Monday night.

“It would be hard not to go,” Lawton Benton said. “God, it’s been so long.”

Others from the area who planned to attend the game include Wells Fargo branch manager Mike Hirsch of Pawleys Island and six members of his family including his wife and three sons, Bill and Laura Crowther of Murrells Inlet, Carolina Forest dentist Mark McCoy, Dunes Realty general manager Ryan Swaim and Rick Elliott of Elliott Realty.

Many if not all of them also attended Clemson’s wins over North Carolina the ACC Championship in Charlotte on Dec. 5 and Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl in Miami on Dec. 31.

“We’ve lived through thick and thin with them. We go to about all the games at home,” said Carson Benton, whose family has had Clemson season tickets since the 1950s. “We’ve always gone to the bowl games. Even when they’re 7-6 or 9-3 or whatever their season was. We just always have supported Clemson.”

Socastee High athletics director Tim Renfrow and his family have perhaps the most emotional investment in the game, as his son and former Socastee quarterback Hunter Renfrow is a redshirt freshman who is a consistent contributor on offense at wide receiver.

Tim Renfrow said 10 family members from the Myrtle Beach area will be at the game, and he expects more than 30 family members in total to be in attendance. Renfrow’s wife, Suzanne, is a Clemson graduate, his son, Jordan, is scheduled to graduate in May and his daughter, Chelsea, is also a student.

Renfrow doesn’t expect to see Hunter, who received six tickets for the game, until the game is over.

“It’s exciting. It’s going to be a special time,” said Renfrow, who played against Clemson during its national championship 1981 season as a defensive back at Wofford and intercepted a pass in a 45-10 loss.

The Benton brothers, who own C L Benton & Sons construction, have been some of the more ardent supporters of the Tigers, and their support peaked when Lawton’s son Spencer was a Tigers kicker from 2009-12.

That’s about the time they customized a former work van into a Clemson-mobile used at tailgates. It is entirely covered in a graphics wrap in Clemson’s orange, white and black with images including Tigers and Clemson emblems.

They purchased the van to transport workers from Florence when the economy was good around 2005 but didn’t need it any longer after the economy crashed in 2007-08 and they had to cut down their workforce.

Carson estimates $30,000 was spent to turn the van into a tailgate centerpiece. “We said why don’t we fix something up that we could all enjoy to make tailgating a little easier and more fun,” Lawton Benton said. “That’s how all this kind of came about.”

The back seats were removed and the interior was renovated. A TV was installed that swings in and out of a side door with a retractable awning attached to the roof to shield the screen from sun and rain.

The back of the van has space for coolers and a generator to operate its satellite TV and a microwave. The van also has a restroom.

The back of the van features the words “Clemson Bound” and a picture from the back of Spencer rising above many of his teammates as they are on the hill that features Howard’s Rock at Clemson’s stadium. The Bentons had to get approval from the NCAA to use the photo and had to replace the names on the back of the jerseys of the other players to “Clemson.”

Current Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney recruited Spencer as an assistant to Tommy Bowden. “He was just a special guy,” Lawton Benton said. “You knew then he was real genuine and so charismatic. The first time I met him I was blown away. He kind of set you at ease.”

Clemson alums in the Benton family include Carson and Lawton’s father, James Carson Benton, who attended Clemson in the early 1950s before enrolling in the Navy, as well as Carson’s ex-wife, son and daughter and two of Lawton’s three children. A nephew is currently enrolled.

Attending the game will require a financial commitment. A search of Orbitz showed flights from Myrtle Beach to Phoenix for the game started at about $1,500, hotel rates are inflated because of the game, and the Bentons said the face value of tickets are between $450-$600.

Season ticket holders had to request tickets from Clemson for both the Orange Bowl and championship game in early December.

Many of those traveling are supporters or representatives of the Clemson athletic booster club IPTAY, which was founded in the 1930s and stands for: I Pay Ten a Year. “We joke that now it’s closer to ‘I Pay $10,000 a Year,’ ” said Bill Crowther, one of four IPTAY reps for Georgetown County. He said there are more than 20 reps in Horry County. “The 10 is still there they just added some zeros.”

Bill, the president of Atlantic Energy Alliance, and Laura, chief executive officer of the Coastal Carolinas Association of Realtors, met through Clemson tailgating and married in 2008.

Bill is a Pickens native and season ticket holder since 2003 who attended Clemson in the early 1970s. His father and son both also went there. Laura’s grandfather played football at Clemson and her father and two cousins also attended the school.

“It’s exciting times,” Laura Crowther said. “It will be great fun to go and to carry our support through the season.”

This story was originally published January 11, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "A sea of orange has traveled from the beach to the Arizona desert."