Trips to Columbia taught Clemson players how heated rivalry is
The majority of the players on Clemson’s depth chart are not from the state of South Carolina and did not grow up around the Palmetto State rivalry, but it does not take the out-of-state players long to realize just how intense the matchup with the Gamecocks is.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney plays a highlight video for his team each Monday during the week of the South Carolina game to offer a glimpse of what Saturday’s game will be like.
“I’ll never forget just watching that video, you could just see the emotion in the game itself. And then that week in practice all of the guys, it just felt like a different week,” Tigers linebacker Shaq Smith said. “You would’ve thought we were playing in the national championship my freshman year when that game came along... It’s a big game.”
But to fully understand the rivalry you first have to attend the USC-Clemson game.
Smith, who is from Florida, remembers the hostility the Tigers faced last year at Williams-Brice Stadium.
“It’s not every week in college football where you’re running to the locker room and people are spitting on you and throwing stuff on you,” Smith said. “It might be some hatred in their blood down there but the feelings are mutual. It’s a big game.”
Indeed the feelings are clearly mutual on both sides of the rivalry. Clemson warms up in Columbia near South Carolina’s student section, while the Gamecocks will warm up near the Clemson student section during their trip to Clemson this weekend.
That leads to plenty of animosity being displayed.
“You see what the fans do when we go to Columbia throwing stuff on the field and giving us a finger. It definitely don’t take long to realize what this game means to the people in this state,” senior defensive lineman Austin Bryant said.
One moment in particular stands out to the Georgia native Bryant, and it involves an exchange Clemson All-American Christian Wilkins had with a USC fan during pregame last year.
Wilkins was going through his pregame routine, which includes catching passes, when a ball bounced into the stands and into the South Carolina student section.
“The guy picked up the ball and as Christian was walking to go get it, he was holding it out and just as Christian reached out to get it he chunked the ball to the opposite 40-yard line and just looked at him. I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, OK. That’s what kind of night it’s going to be?’” Bryant recalled. “So that’s one moment that I always think about because it’s funny to me that it happened to Christian. And I can go back to them giving us the finger when we scored going towards their student section, throwing trash on the field — never seen that before. So yeah, that was pretty interesting.”
Clemson has plenty of freshmen that have never attended a South Carolina-Clemson game before that will do so for the first time this weekend, including quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
They will get to see firsthand just how intense the rivalry is.
“Definitely that would be a goal to go undefeated against these guys. That’s definitely a goal to go for,” Lawrence said. “Since I’ve known I was coming here, even like last year in high school just watching the game, you can definitely tell how intense the rivalry is, so I’m excited for it.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2018 at 8:21 AM with the headline "Trips to Columbia taught Clemson players how heated rivalry is."