Why I love being a Gamecock?

Even after a 30-0 loss to Clemson

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

IN THE WAKE of Saturday night’s 30-0 shutout loss at the hands of our archrival Clemson Tigers, a few (though not all) of my Tiger-supporting friends have jeered at my University of South Carolina Gamecock football program. A few of my fellow Gamecocks have wrongly called for the new coach’s head, figuratively of course. A few out-of-state friends and transplants – with no real skin in the game – have offered their condolences. One female friend even asked why I’m such a diehard Gamecock fan when our football program seems to be mired in decades of mediocrity interspersed with brief periods of success and only marginal hope it seems.

“Why not pull for somebody else?” she said.

The answer lies within a fourfold set of reasons: Familial and familiar, collegial, practical, and traditional.

FIRST, FAMILIAL AND FAMILIAR: My dad was a deep-dyed garnet bleeding Gamecock as was his dad before him. In fact in the late 1930s and early ‘40s, Dad, as a boy of no more than 12 years old, and his buddies would hitchhike or ride in the back of watermelon trucks from the whistlestop town of Williston (in Barnwell County, S.C.) to the Assembly Street farmers’ market in Columbia so they could then walk a few miles south to the stadium to watch the Gamecocks play football. Dad loved Gamecock sports, primarily football and basketball. He never attended the university, but he was a full scholarship donor his entire adult life. He had season tickets on the 50-yard-line and a parking space less than 20 feet from the north wall of Williams-Brice Stadium.

Dad also wore a Carolina class ring, one that a USC graduate traded him for a new set of tires, that Dad wore every day for the final 30-plus years of his life.

As a boy, I remember all of Dad’s friends being Gamecock fans, some were USC grads like J.C. Inabinet and Billy Jamison who attended Carolina on G.I. Bill scholarships after WWII. Even Mom was – and is today at nearly 87-years-old – a serious Gamecock fan, as were all of her friends. Mom also attended nearly all the home games and many away games with Dad when he was alive. One of Dad’s best friends – my boyhood boss John R. Davis – was then and is today a huge Gamecock fan, as is his wife Ethel.

All my childhood friends were Gamecock fans. We all wore Gamecock t-shirts, sweatshirts, and caps. We pretended we were Gamecocks whenever we played pickup basketball games and backyard football games.

Whether at the goal at the end of my driveway or on the basketball court at school, whenever my friends and I shot free-throws, we always made the sign of the cross like all the supercool older Catholic boys playing on Coach Frank McGuire’s Gamecock squad. And when I played on a youth league basketball team at nearby Trenholm Park in 1970, the entire team nearly got into a locker-room brawl over who would wear #11, the jersey number of the great John Roche.

I attended Frank McGuire basketball camp as a kid, and was coached by the 1st-string players of the famous ACC championship-winning Gamecock basketball team. I got several autographs. I met one-on-one with the great Coach McGuire who came to my room after my roommate Herbie got into a bloody fistfight in the chow hall. And Assistant Coach Buck Freeman bought me a Milky Way candy bar and a small Coke when I ran out of cash and didn’t have a dime to call Mom and Dad for more money.

A DEEPER DIVE INTO MY FAMILY’S HISTORY

Stretching back to before the Civil War, many of my blood-related ancestors who served in the state legislature were huge supporters of the South Carolina College (founded in 1801) later the University of South Carolina.

There was also my cousin, the late U.S. Navy Admiral Norman Murray Smith, who served as president of USC from 1945 to 1952. I never knew him, though Dad did, Norman was one of the founders of the U.S. Navy SEABEES. His brother, the late S.C. Rep. Winchester Smith, was one of four members of the famous “Barnwell Ring” which included S.C. Senator Edgar Brown, Governor J. Emile Harley, and Speaker of the House Solomon Blatt. And yes, the Blatt Physical Education Center in which I worked-out during my college years was named for ol’ Sol Blatt.

Following Norman Smith’s term, Dr. Francis W. Bradley assumed the reigns as interim president of USC. Another connection, Bradley was a highly decorated WWI Army intelligence officer and respected educator for whom my elementary school was later named.

First Baptist Church Pastor H. Edwin Young, who baptized me when I was 12, was not only a Gamecock fan, but the senior chaplain for the Gamecock football team. And so many of the older male influences and examples in my life were either USC grads, fervent fans or both.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE COLLEGIAL REASON: I graduated from USC (BA in History, class of 1982). My two nephews (and godsons) also finished USC, as did my brother-in-law and my stepdad. Years after I graduated, I taught several semesters as an adjunct professor at the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

So even if there was no distant family history and boyhood connections, there’d be my own schooling and teaching and that of my current extended family in terms of why I might forever be a fan.

THERE’S ALSO THE PRACTICAL: Over the years, I’ve been blessed to interview several Gamecock football coaches for magazine and newspaper features, even current Athletics Director Ray Tanner when he was the head baseball coach, Heisman winner George Rogers, and “free-spirited” signal-caller Steve “Taney-thrill” Taneyhill, who I literally cornered on Gervais Street and persuaded – during the zenith of his college QB stardom – to speak and sign autographs at a kid’s football awards banquet for my ex-wife’s son who was playing Pop Warner Football at the time.

I was also blessed to befriend many now-deceased Gamecock greats like Tatum Gressette, longtime head football coach at The Citadel; Dom Fusci of the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins; and King Dixon, former USC athletic director and retired lieutenant colonel of Marines.

I could go on-and-on.

THEN THERE’S THE TRADITIONAL: I love the richness of our school colors, garnet and black. I love the unusualness of our mascot, a fighting gamecock, the namesake of Brig. Gen. Thomas Sumter, one of the larger-than-life South Carolina heroes of the American Revolution.

So we have a big scrappy blood-red game rooster as a mascot stemming from the nickname of a hard-fighting militia general! And Sumter’s “gamecock” nom de guerre was given him by his enemy, British dragoon commander Banastre Tarleton. What’s more Southern Americana than that?

I love our historic “horseshoe” and all the old buildings therein anchored by the oldest separate library building in North America. And speaking of our Revolution, I love the fact that Gen. Washington’s quasi-adopted son, Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, visited our school during his “grand tour” of the new republic in 1825.

Beyond school history and tradition, I love that two of our major sports programs have won three national championships – two in baseball and one in women’s basketball – since 2010, not counting conference and division titles in other major sports going back decades.

I love that we beat Clemson five years straight in football 2009-2013 (Yes, I’m painfully aware that they’ve now chalked up seven).

I love that we constantly, season-after-season, produce early picks in the NFL draft.

I love that one of them, super-gifted Jadeveon Clowney, who my youngest nephew pinned in the first-round of a wrestling match in a state championship when the two were in middle school, was selected first overall by the Houston Texans in 2014.

I love that we have two former players George Rogers and Sterling Sharpe and two former coaches Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier in the national College Football Hall of Fame.

I love that our football teams are the perpetual underdogs season after season where the wins we chalk-up are never taken for granted.

I love that we are bowl eligible this year under a new young coach, Shane Beamer, after experiencing two back-to-back losing seasons.

Again, I could go on-and-on. But as anyone can see, what’s NOT to love? How could a man (or woman) blessed with all of this, pull for any other? Why would anyone want to?

– W. Thomas Smith Jr. is a New York Times bestselling editor. Visit him online at http://uswriter.com.