Urgent

Your desire is insane
You can’t stop until you do it again - Foreigner


I don't know how old I was the first time I heard these lyrics. I don't know how old I was the first time I watched a Clemson/South Carolina football game, though it probably came when I was an infant in 1978. All I know is, these words were first sung in 1981, the same year Clemson won its first national championship in football, and effectively kicked its program into hyper-speed, leaving South Carolina choking on its cosmic dust. Nearly 40 years have passed since those two events collided to create the University of South Carolina's worst nightmare, and 40 more will certainly pass in kind.

Every November the South Carolina Gamecocks offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs to the mighty Tigers of Clemson, yet every year they enter the game actually believing they have a chance to win. They are fools. So are their fans. Since the Great Year, Clemson owns a 20-7-1 record in the series, dominating their arch rival in every imaginable way. Though that record is thoroughly impressive and shameful, consider that the record in Columbia over that same period is even more of both. On Clemson Tiger field at Williams-Brice stadium, the Tigers are 12-2. In four days that record will be 13-2. The Gamecocks are, in a word, goosed.

Nobody knows whether or not the bard, Lou Gramm, was specifically thinking of the Clemson/South Carolina rivalry when he first sang this song, not of forbearance, but of desperation. I have my opinion, but that's not important. Urgency breeds carelessness, and carelessness breeds 2-13 records against your arch rival on your home field. They want to win, but they aren't good enough. Their desire is insane. After losing on Saturday, they and their fans will spend a few months wallowing in their athletic crapulence. They'll talk of moving the game to the start of the season, or canceling the series altogether. They'll turn on each other, half of them wanting to fire Coach, the other half supporting Coach because "he's really building a winner here." It's become as much a part of the holidays as turkey and naps. But then around early February, the Gamecock faithful will come to life again, celebrating a vastly overrated recruiting class, its ranking bloated by worthless 4 star JUCO linemen and no less than 6 average safeties turned wide receiver. And then it will start anew. They won't be able to stop, and they'll do it again. They're so urgent. Emergency.

Just as I was born at the start of the Danny Ford era, my daughter came to us at the start of Dabo Swinney era (make of that what you will). She will probably watch bits and pieces of her first Clemson/South Carolina game this Saturday, though she surely won't remember it. Perhaps somewhere a young Brit is putting together a musical arrangement that will capture perfectly the theme of this rivalry over the course of her young lifetime. The odds of that are better than Carolina winning on Saturday.


Now today's MOAG, looks like the moral victories are starting early this year:

- I like the Gamecocks chances against clemson solely on the basis that SC is a better team.

- I have being saying the same thing since we joined the SEC, let's move the game to the beginning of the season and then we can shuffle our SEC schedule so that we aren't being punished at the end of the year. Let's start concentrating on winning the SEC and less about Clemson.

- The game belongs at the BEGINNING of the season. Anyone who thinks that this rivalry game should be at the end for tradition's sake is ignoring the game's history to begin with. No one says it has to be the opener, either - just near the beginning of the season. Let's get this thing going at the beginning of the season before USC has been through the SEC blender and the taters have finished their milquetoast ACC schedule. At least then we'd both be fresh instead of just the taters every year.

- There is no reason NOT to move it

- Better hope you get us this year taters because your next year is the real year one of the spurrier era.

- why do the taters fear moving the game up? I think we all know the answer.

- I have a new fight song for wimpson and the entire ACC for that matter. It's from Tiny Tim and the title fits your program like a glove "Tip Toe Through The Tulips". Now please go back to the bathroom because that's where your best thoughts come out. I'm waiting for the answer to the fairyland loss. Then I'll listen to you. GO GAMECOCKS!!! ROCK!

- You guys shadow box all season while we fight Ali for 11 rounds. Then you come in the ring for your match with us. That's what it's like. No excuse,just saying.

- Itwould give us a fair shot at the Tigers; as it is now, they play an ACCschedule that is arguably softer on the W/L's column, but moreso on theirinjuries. We enter the game afetr a grueling SEC schedule. If if is a test of the true in-state rivalry, then let's Tee it up on a level field on the first game.

*Special thanks to Ron Morris for making all of this possible today