Commentary: USC voices ring loud and clear about taking the flag down

South Carolina is the only state in our union where what Ray Tanner, Harris Pastides and Connor Shaw et al. did Monday counts as taking a stand, but it does.

As word started to leak that the state’s most powerful politicians were thinking about putting their support behind removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the State House, Tanner took to Twitter just after lunch to make his feelings known.

“It is time to remove the flag,” Tanner posted on his social media account. “We are ONE !! #CharlestonStrong #Gamecocks.”

University president Harris Pastides followed, and maybe the biggest blow to the Confederacy since Robert E. Lee took a knee at Appomattox came from former South Carolina quarterback Connor Shaw.

“Any flag that contradicts everything our Country flag represents, it shouldn’t fly,” Shaw wrote. “We ALL stand united.”

Given the esteem Gamecock fans have for Shaw, it’s a miracle the flag survived the hour.

Getting ahead of a politician in taking a stand is no great feat, but it was notable how loud the University of South Carolina voices sounded Monday amidst four days of silence from most of the state’s lawmakers since the loss of nine lives at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

By Monday, the opinion of Tanner, Shaw, etc. sounded so obvious that it felt silly they needed to voice it. But they did. Tanner declined Monday to expand on his comments about the flag, deferring to the school’s official public stance.

The Confederate flag has flown next to a Confederate memorial on the State House grounds since 2000, when it was taken off the capitol dome. It is back in the news now after alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was seen holding it limply in photos that have surfaced since the tragedy.

In addition to all the real world ugliness represented by the flag, it has been a thorn for Gamecocks athletics for a while thanks to an NCAA ban on allowing the state to host certain sporting events and the drumbeat of negative recruiting the school’s coaches have faced because of it.

The Gamecocks’ lone missing voice on the subject Monday was South Carolina’s most powerful one – football coach Steve Spurrier. It’s likely Spurrier’s silence was the result of a news-free day on the golf course or at the beach. He did not return a message left by The State on Monday, but he was not hesitant to call for the removal of the flag eight years ago.

“It would make us a more progressive, better state, I think, if the flag was removed, but I’m not going to go on any big campaign to have it removed. That’s not my position,” Spurrier said in 2007. “But if anyone were to ask me, that would certainly be my position.”

It was “embarrassing” for the flag to be waved in the background of ESPN’s GameDay program before the Gamecocks game against Tennessee that year, Spurrier said.

“Some clown or some dude was waving that big ol‘ Confederate flag right behind them about the whole time they were on,” he said. “I’m not trying to be a politician. I just gave my opinion. If our team wins big and wins the conference championship, then I’ll have a bigger voice. That’s just the way life is. If we stumble-bumble around, no one gives a dang what I say. If I want to make a change to hopefully make this state better, we need to win big.”

In the end, shamefully, it took an enormous loss to force change. It’s too horrible for the sports page to try to figure out why it took nine dead people to jumpstart this conversation again. It’s too horrible for any page. It’s just the fact.

It’s also now the fact that the Confederate flag is on the run in South Carolina.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Commentary: USC voices ring loud and clear about taking the flag down."