October 12, 2012 / The Associated Press / Columbia, S.C. – Clemson University, which spent millions helping farmers grow tobacco and was famed for tobacco-spitting football coach Danny Ford, is banning all tobacco products both indoors and outdoors within two years.

Clemson officials said they are bringing together students, professors and administrators to write a tobacco-free policy and put the plans in place by 2014.

Clemson won’t be the first South Carolina school to ban tobacco, but it will be the largest. The school has plenty of ties to tobacco, such as a $380,000 grant from Philip Morris International in 2010 to pay for research to lower the cost of growing the crop and the image of Ford with a plug of tobacco in his cheek watching the championship-winning Tigers play in the 1980s.

But with all the research on the dangers of smoking and other tobacco use, the university decided it was time to take another step to improve the health of students and employees, said George Clay, the university’s executive director of student health.

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