Spurrier struggles to make SCarolina-Clemson rivalry important, but not the No. 1 goal

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Spurrier battles with SCarolina-Clemson intensity

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier understands all about rivalries.

In the early ’60s at Scientific Hill High in the mountains of Tennessee, he said there’s nothing he wanted to do more than knock off crosstown Kingsport High.

At Florida, he beat Florida State to win the national championship in one of the hottest rivalries of the 1990s.

But when he came to the Gamecocks, he didn’t want his team putting too much into winning just one game a season. So he took down the “Beat Clemson” signs around the locker room, saying winning the Southeastern Conference title was the team’s No. 1 goal.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute now, we want to beat everybody we play.’ I don’t think that is helpful. I really don’t. That’s my opinion,” Spurrier said this week as the Gamecocks prepare to try snapping a three-game losing streak Saturday against the No. 15 Tigers.

But after five years in the Palmetto State, Spurrier has a better understanding of the rivalry, and why it is so important to Gamecocks fans.

So, with their SEC hopes gone a month ago, The Head Ball Coach has no trouble calling this the biggest game of the year for his team as it tries to shake another late season swoon. But he’s still not foaming at the mouth to beat Clemson.

“Sometimes, the fans don’t think we dislike them enough, we don’t hate them enough and this that and the other,” Spurrier said. “It’s how you play the game that determines the winner.”

Spurrier’s Gamecocks have lost three of four to Clemson, and they have all been costly.

His first loss in 2005 snapped a five-game winning streak that included wins over Florida and Tennessee that broke long losing streaks.

Two years later, a Tigers win kept South Carolina from a bowl game and ended its season on a five game losing streak. And last season, several Gamecocks players said they were embarrassed in a loss where the team looked so out of sorts that fans started grumbling and Spurrier fired several assistants during the offseason.

“They just flat beat us last year. We were sort of in disarray, had a lot of guys going in different directions I guess. Maybe coaches too,” Spurrier said.

And after South Carolina’s only win since he arrived, Spurrier sold game balls with the 31-28 score at touchdown clubs across the state and talked about how he hoped that win might be the catalyst for turning the long-mediocre program around. The Gamecocks are 20-17 since then.

Up the road about 150 miles, the Tigers leave little doubt to the importance of the game to them. Beating South Carolina is one of five goals permanently posted in a team meeting room, sandwiched between winning their Division and the Atlantic Coast Conference title.

“It’s a great rivalry, very similar to what I grew up in,” said Swinney, who was raised in Birmingham, Ala., in the midst of Alabama vs. Auburn. “The people just don’t like each other.”

Swinney also has a built-in advantage talking up the game because his team has dominated the rivalry. Clemson has won nearly two-thirds of its games over South Carolina and the series has become even more skewed in recent years with the Tigers winning six out of seven and 16 of the past 21 games. Former coach Tommy Bowden went 7-2 against the Gamecocks, buying him time even through he never won the ACC.

Spurrier has no idea why South Carolina has had so much trouble against Clemson over the years.

“The only answer I can say is maybe they’ve had better teams than South Carolina, over the years. People always ask me how we’d start beating Georgia all of a sudden,” Spurrier said of his Florida teams. “I say because we had better teams in the 90s.”

But there is a key difference in Georgia-Florida and South Carolina-Clemson — the Gamecocks and Tigers don’t play in the same conference.

Spurrier said the arrival of the season-ending league title game and the proliferation of bowl games has diminished the traditional season-ending rivalries that gave one set of fans bragging rights for an entire year.

“I think in the past, it used to be bigger because there wasn’t a bowl game,” Spurrier said. “But now with a bowl game after your rivalry game … we’re all as good as our last game.”

AP Sports Writer Pete Iacobelli contributed to this report from Clemson.