Celebration for Gamecock great, Five Points champ Steve Taneyhill fills street
Steve Taneyhill was already sick when he decided to buy two more bars in his beloved Five Points, Columbia’s college-centric nightlife district where the Gamecock great himself spent many nights during his own school days.
The famed University of South Carolina quarterback who in 1995 led the Gamecocks to their first bowl game victory already owned Five Points’ landmark bar Group Therapy, which he bought in 2016, saying at the time that he’d wanted to own the bar since he was 18 years old. And buying more bars was on Taneyhill’s unspoken bucket list. He had cancer. And he had things to do.
And so in the summer of 2023, he announced his expansion.
“Well … I just bought Breakers and Breakers Live,” he wrote on Twitter, in a partnership with Cocks By 90 commentator Jeff O’Hara. Breakers would become CB-18, for Cocks by 18, an homage to his Gamecock jersey number.
He also brought into the venture Lauren Greenlee, a Group Therapy bartender turned general manager with ambitions to own her own bar – one day.
“He wanted to see everyone else around him grow,” said Greenlee, who now thanks to Taneyhill co-owns CB-18 and Breakers Live.
Taneyhill, the “mullet man,” swaggering, even cocky quarterback who once autographed the Clemson tiger paw after a victorious win over the rival team was remembered Saturday, yes for his swagger, but also for his contagious energy, his generosity and his ability to see “the best in people,” as Greenlee put it.
Taneyhill died Dec. 15 from a rare cancer that he lived with for more than four years before his death. He was 52 years old.
On Saturday, his friends, family and myriad fans dressed the street outside Group Therapy in a tapestry of garnet and bright, white ones and eights, and shared memories and stories to celebrate Taneyhill’s life.
“This is exactly how Steve would have wanted it,” O’Hara, Steve’s friend and business partner, said.
‘Living fully’
In August 2021, while he was driving home to Spartanburg from Columbia, Taneyhill’s blood sugar bottomed out, his wife, Tabitha, told the crowd Saturday, detailing her family’s journey with her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
The car accident landed Taneyhill at Lexington Medical Center, something his family is grateful for. There, doctors found a stage four malignant insulinoma.
“A term neither of us had ever heard,” Tabitha said. It was a rare and deadly cancer. And it was incurable.
Over the next four years Taneyhill snowmobiled through the mountains. He went deep-sea fishing with friends. He went hunting. He coached his stepson’s sixth-grade football team to an undefeated season. He bought his bars, and a farm. He got four more seasons of Gamecock football.
“And yes, he fought and beat Dick Harpootlian more than once to keep Five Points, Five Points,” Tabitha said to cheers, referencing a victory to keep the bars’ liquor license, a feat his acolytes said was among Taneyhill’s greatest.
“That was Steve living fully, fighting hard, and never backing down,” she said. “Steve packed more life and adventure into those four years than some people do in a lifetime.”
Many of Taneyhill’s friends didn’t know he had cancer until after his death. He didn’t want the disease to define his life, Tablitha said.
‘Just who I thought he’d be’
For all of Taneyhill’s bravado, his friends said he was also down to earth. Someone who could chat for hours, who liked to give his friends a hard time.
“He’d always bust my chops, asking me where my Gamecock gear was,” said Orry Lee, known to most by his social media persona Cornbread Cowboy. Part of that persona includes flashy western wear, sometimes an Elvis costume. Taneyhill was always quick to point out when a costume failed to pass the Garnet and Black requirement.
Lee grew up idolizing Taneyhill. He was the first Gamecock quarterback he ever saw at Williams-Brice. He was star-struck when years later he not only got to meet his childhood hero but form a friendship with him.
“He was just who I thought he’d be,” Lee said.
One of Taneyhill’s former teammates and one-time roommate Ed Hrubiec seconded that sentiment. He remembered being a few years younger than Taneyhill, arriving at USC as a freshman already aware of Taneyhill’s big reputation.
He was confident, but he was also welcoming and warm. Hrubiec remembered his parents coming to visit campus and Taneyhill taking them in and showing them around.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving this year, Taneyhill called Columbia’s mayor with a dilemma – he had 50 turkeys and he needed to find 50 families to give them to.
“Steve did things like this all the time and never took credit for it,” Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said Saturday, before sharing that the city of Columbia had declared Jan. 10 as Stephen Thomas Taneyhill Remembrance Day.
“You’re going to hear more and more stories about the impact Steve had off the field, behind the scenes, without taking credit,” he said.
This story was originally published January 11, 2026 at 7:52 AM.
