Carolina-Clemson or Clemson-Carolina: It’s good ole fashion hate

If you are from the state of South Carolina, you have been waiting for this week to get here for a long time.

Why?

It’s Carolina-Clemson Week or Clemson-Carolina Week, depending on what side of the fence you are on.

It has been two years since the Tigers and Gamecocks got together on the football field. Last year’s game, of course, was canceled by the SEC due to its own COVID Protocol rules.

So, the two things that have stopped the Palmetto State’s biggest game from being played in the last 125 years is a near war between the two student bodies and a global pandemic. Other than that, the two rivals have meet 117 times on the gridiron, with Clemson owning a 71-42-4 edge.

The Tigers have won the last six in the series and win in Columbia on Saturday will tie Clemson’s own record of seven straight wins over the Gamecocks, which it did from 1934-’40. The most consecutive victories USC owns over the Tigers is five (2009-’13).

The best thing about this game is these two schools and fan bases do not like each other. And the hate between the two is not all about football. The rivalry between Clemson and Carolina goes way deeper than a game.

The bitterness between the two schools goes back before Clemson even existed.

It all started when Benjamin Tillman, a farmer from Edgefield, South Carolina, was not pleased with the way the University of South Carolina was handling its agriculture department and demanded the university take agriculture more seriously.

Tillman, who became the Governor in South Carolina in 1890, through the nastiness of politics, eventually got his way. He was aided by Thomas Green Clemson, who willed his Fort Hill estate to the state of South Carolina with the sole purpose of the establishment of a land-grant college called “The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina.”

When Clemson opened its doors in 1893, it nearly forced South Carolina to close its doors. South Carolina lost its university status and went back to South Carolina College. Tillman threatened to close the school, but he succeeded to only make it a liberal arts college while in office.

Though it had nothing to do with football, Tillman’s feud with South Carolina planted the seed of hatred these two rivals and their fan bases share today.

The disdain between Clemson and South Carolina has lived out on the football field several times during their 117 meetings and even carried into the streets on one occasion. In 1902, there was a near war between the Clemson cadets and South Carolina students over a picture which showed a Gamecock crowing over a sad Tiger.

The cadets warned the USC students, following the Gamecocks’ 12-6 win not to bring the picture to the Elks’ parade the following day. The South Carolina students did not listen, so more than 400 Clemson cadets marched on to USC’s campus, with guns keep in mind, demanding the USC students hand over the picture.

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed after the police arrived. A joint committee of six students from both sides worked out a peaceful solution. The picture was burned between the two groups.

Due to the seriousness of what happened, the rivalry was suspended and was not renewed again until 1909. Since then, the Clemson-Carolina game was played every year, with the 2019 meeting being the 111^th consecutive meeting. It was the second longest uninterrupted series in college football at the time.

But the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, and though an abbreviated college football season was played in the fall, the SEC—the conference South Carolina is in—only wanted to play conference-only games, thus ending the rivalry’s uninterrupted series.

Prior to the global pandemic, the rivalry survived the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which happened 58 years ago today.

The hate between Clemson and Carolina has carried onto the football on a few occasions.

In 1946, counterfeit tickets were sold and fans from both sides were denied entrance when the duplicate tickets were discovered. The mob eventually worked its way into the stadium and flowed onto the sidelines.

Frank Howard, Clemson’s head coach at the time, joked that a woman tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he would take off his hat so she could see the game.

Things got worse when a Clemson fan ran onto the field at halftime and wringed the neck of a live chicken. Both sides stormed the field, and the game was nearly cancelled. Eventually ordered was restored and USC went to win, 26-14.

Another fight amongst the fans broke out in 1961, when members of South Carolina’s Sigma Nu fraternity mocked the Tigers by dressing up like the Clemson team after the real Tigers had already gone into the locker room following pre-game warmups.

The frat boys borrowed uniforms from Orangeburg High School and even had a student dress up like Coach Howard.

The prank was so good, the Clemson band started playing its fight song “Tiger Rag” when the fake Tigers took the field. The Clemson fans stood up and started to cheer, while the USC fans booed.

But soon the people in the stands started to figure something was wrong when the Clemson players mimed milking a cow. Some fell clumsily to the ground while running drills, while others let the ball bounce off their facemask while trying to catch punts.

Eventually, the Clemson fans caught on and stormed the field. There was pushing and shoving, but eventually the game was played, which the Gamecocks won, 21-14.

In 1983, the real Tigers and Gamecocks got into when there was a little brawl near the end of the game at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. Clemson won the game, 22-13, but nothing serious came out of it.

However, there was a big brawl between the two teams in 2004. And there were consequences.

It started near the end of the Tigers’ 29-7 victory.

The fight broke out when Clemson’s Bobby Williamson shoved South Carolina quarterback Syvelle Newton to the ground following an incomplete pass with 5:48 to play. Both benches cleared and chaos followed.

Play was suspended for six minutes and, luckily, no fans ever entered the field. Eventually, law enforcement officers restored order, but the damage was done.

The brawl was shown all over the country and in the days that followed, both Clemson and South Carolina agreed to remove their names from bowl consideration as punishment. Several players from both teams were also suspended for multiple games the following year.

So, as you can tell from the stories above, Carolina-Clemson or Clemson-Carolina is not your typical rivalry and it is not called the Palmetto Bowl, though some people are trying to make us call it that. We call it Carolina-Clemson or Clemson-Carolina. It is just good ole fashion hate.