Column: Rivalry games can't keep the sun down

Nov. 26—They say every result or outcome makes someone happy.

I suspect about half of our readership woke up with a smile on their face this morning. The other half, I'm guessing, did not.

The annual Carolina-Clemson game was played yesterday afternoon, and you can read all about it in our sports section.

Before we go further, many of you know I am a University of South Carolina graduate and was born into a family that roots for the Gamecocks. Both of my parents attended the school, and my sister has two degrees from there. My wife is a proud South Carolina alum.

So there is none of this "House Divided" business for us. Garnet and black are our colors.

As a young man, there was nothing more important to me than the annual November clash between South Carolina's two biggest universities. That day was circled on my calendar and eagerly anticipated.

Now, you have to remember this was the late 1970s. My primary source of information was reading the sports pages of The State and Aiken Standard. Televised games were scarce back then. I relied on the radio broadcast of Bob Fulton, known as "The Voice of the Gamecocks," and star quarterback-turned-color commentator Tommy Suggs. I spent many, many hours listening to them call games.

I'm not saying today's kids have it easy, but almost every major college game is televised somewhere and the amount of information available through the internet and social media is unbelievable.

Back in my day, we had the good ol' newspaper and a bunch of smack talk on the school playground. Kids would wear their favorite school's colors leading up to the big game; if your team didn't win, you dreaded showing your face Monday morning.

Now you can get taunted almost immediately on Facebook or Twitter. Your humiliation doesn't have to wait. If your team wins, you can brag right away.

I remember as a kid — again, this was a long time ago — there was a local radio station that would report the college scores live as they came in. (There was no ticker on the bottom of ESPN, or whipping out your cell phone to check.) When our team won, we would call the radio station and ask if they had the Carolina-Clemson score. We tried not to snicker as we asked.

My earliest memory of the Carolina-Clemson game was the infamous 1975 affair. I remember my father being excited as we listened on the radio. The Gamecocks scored at will, and the final score was 56-20. Many in the orange-and-purple crowd felt their rivals ran the score up that day.

Clemson took revenge over the next few decades, regularly piecing together winning streaks. I finally started attending the big game in person in 1983; that was another Carolina loss, one remembered for the Gamecocks wearing all black and for an ugly post-game melee.

The 1984 contest remains a favorite for me. I sat in the Clemson student section, thanks to a ticket I had purchased from a high school friend. The Gamecocks were enjoying their "Black Magic" season, but had just suffered a devastating loss at Navy that had kept them from a shot at the national championship. The Gamecocks fought back from a halftime deficit and won on a last-minute drive.

The games were always fun to attend and cover as a journalist, but now I'm happy to watch them from the comfort of my easy chair. I can rewind if I miss something, or pause the action if I need to get a snack or take a bathroom break.

Recently, though, I feel like I've entered a time warp and gone back 40 years to my high school days. The Gamecocks had some decent teams and players back then, but Georgia and Clemson won back-to-back national championships and were part of the national conversation. Now the Tigers and Bulldogs are perennial title contenders.

I don't take the losses as hard as I used to. I don't mope for days, as my wife likes to remind me. I'm pretty sure the sun will come up, win or lose.

I'm always hopeful that the Gamecocks will end Clemson's winning streak. When the Gamecocks won five in a row from 2009-2013, fans liked to flash five fingers to their Tiger friends. My best friend, a Clemson fan, once told me that he was going to run out of fingers to count how many in a row the Tigers were going to win.

I hope he will never be right.

Thanks for reading.