Most South Carolina football fans have attended a game at Williams-Brice Stadium, seen highlights of a young George Rogers, and can recite memorable quotes from the team’s “Head Ball Coach,” Steve Spurrier. But only real fans know the history of the team’s alternate black uniforms, remember when Cocky first appeared as the team’s mascot, or know all the lyrics to “The Fighting Gamecocks Lead the Way.” 100 Things South Carolina Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die reveals the most critical moments and important facts about past and present players, coaches, and teams that are part of the storied history that is South Carolina football. Scattered throughout the pages, are pep talks, records, and Gamecocks lore to test fans’ knowledge, including the formative years of South Carolina football, from its origins in the 1800s to Paul Dietzel’s tenure in the 1960s and 1970s; George Rogers’ unforgettable 1980 Heisman Trophy season, including South Carolina’s upset of Bo Schembechler’s favored Michigan team in Ann Arbor; South Carolina’s entrance into the SEC in 1992 and Lou Holtz’s memorable tenure as Gamecocks head coach before Spurrier arrived in Columbia; and profiles of memorable Gamecocks figures such as Joe Morrison, Rogers, Dietzel, Jim Carlen, and recent stars Marcus Lattimore and Jadeveon Clowney. Die-hard fans from the days of George Rogers as well as new supporters of head coach Spurrier’s squad will enjoy this guide to everything Gamecocks fans should know, see, and do in their lifetime. Josh Kendall covers South Carolina football for the State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, and has written about SEC football for more than 15 years. He lives in Lexington, South Carolina. Don Barton is a former sports information director for the University of South Carolina and an athletics department historian. He lives in Forest Hills, South Carolina. 100 Things South Carolina Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die By Josh Kendall Triumph Books Copyright © 2013 Josh Kendall All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60078-850-5 CHAPTER 1 Steve Spurrier — Winning at Last It may seem odd to see such a recent addition to the school's long history in this spot, but the man who killed the Chicken Curse (we'll get to that later) deserves top billing. South Carolina has played football for 119 seasons. Steve Spurrier has been there for eight of them, but he did what no one before him could do — turn the Gamecocks into a consistent winner, or any kind of winner really. His 66 wins at the school, versus 37 losses, are a program record and account for 12 percent of all the games South Carolina has won since its program began in 1892. He not only owns the highest winning percentage at the school (64 percent) since World War II, but he's only the fifth of the 15 coaches in school history with more than 20 games of service to win more than he lost as a Gamecock. Rather than be spooked by the school's historic lack of success, Spurrier was drawn to it when he accepted the job in 2005, one year after a discouraging two-season stint in the NFL, where he was 12–20 with the Washington Redskins. "There was nowhere to go but up. I like those situations," Spurrier said. "There were a whole bunch of firsts we could achieve there at South Carolina if we could keep it going. I had a few buddies say, 'You can't win there. Nobody else has.'" Spurrier did, piling up achievements never before seen in Columbia along the way. From 2005 to 2012, he added the following "firsts" to the school records books (deep breath time here): 11-win season (2011 and again in 2012); top 10 national finish (2011, 2012); six-win SEC season (2011); SEC East title (2010); defeat of a No. 1 team (Alabama, 2010); defeat of rivals Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida in the same season (2010, 2011); back-to-back wins over Tennessee (2010, 2011); road win over Florida (2010); road win over Tennessee (2005); five consecutive bowl appearances; undefeated SEC East season (2011); successful recruitment of nation's No. 1 high school player (Jadeveon Clowney); and five straight seasons with seven or more wins. "If we could get it going the right way, we thought we could do it," Spurrier said. "I thought that it was a place that had not reached its potential yet. It was very similar to when I went to Florida in 1990; they had not reached their potential prior to that. I was lucky to be there at the right time in the right place. That's what coaching is all about — get somewhere at the right time in the right place with some good players. It took a few years to get really good players here." Spurrier was 28–22 in his first four seasons (hardly the kind of success he had become accustomed to in a 12-year run at Florida that included six SEC championships and a national title), and he considered leaving after the 2008 season, which ended with consecutive losses to Florida, Clemson, and Iowa by a combined score of 118–30. "We wanted to try to see what we could do at