Finding Will: How a Clemson fan helped a USC fan reconnect with his past
He hadn’t seen his best friend in almost 20 years.
But that was Will, all right. He was sure of it.
Marvin NeSmith was stunned. It was January 2019, a week before the Clemson-Alabama college football national championship game. NeSmith was at home watching an unrelated bowl game when it went to commercial.
And there he was — Will Limerick, 10 years old, cheering on his Clemson Tigers from the stands of the old Orange Bowl in Miami during the 1981 national title game vs. Nebraska. He wore a straw hat and orange overalls. His face was unmistakable.
Limerick died in 2002 at age 31 of an accidental drug overdose. Now he was on his best friend’s television screen as part of a commercial for the title game — smiling, waving, flashing a “No. 1” sign to the camera as an elementary schooler.
“I was too busy crying to think about hitting ‘record,’” NeSmith said.
NeSmith tried to catch the commercial again. No luck. He searched for the clip online. Nothing. He thought about the moment often and tried a number of Google searches in spare moments to no avail. Life went on. Another six years passed.
Finally, he resorted to a public callout.
“I’d love to find that footage,” NeSmith, a longtime South Carolina fan who goes by the username “GamecockMarv,” wrote in a June 10 post on X (formerly Twitter).
Three days later, the full video was sitting in his social media replies.
And it came from an unlikely source — a Clemson fan.
‘Inseparable’ friends, then guilt
For a long time, NeSmith felt guilty about his best friend’s death.
They initially met in the 1990s. NeSmith was a native of Lugoff, South Carolina outside Columbia who’d served in the U.S. Army before returning to his home state for work. Limerick, from Lancaster, was the boyfriend of a mutual friend named Denise. The two men met when NeSmith moved from Kansas to Rock Hill for a job.
“We hit it off and were inseparable from that day forward,” NeSmith said.
NeSmith said he and Limerick did “everything together” for the next seven years. They hung out. They partied. They took long drives on weekend nights, smoking cigarettes and talking for hours about whatever came to mind.
But Limerick struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues, according to NeSmith. In 1993, Limerick was indicted on federal charges of possession and intent to distribute cocaine, per The State’s archives. He was sentenced to four months of house arrest, four months of prison and three years of probation.
NeSmith never held his best friend’s actions against him. Limerick, he said, had struggled to cope with the murder of his grandfather for as long as he knew him.
In 2002, NeSmith moved to Florence for a new job and hadn’t seen Limerick in about six months. Then Limerick called out of the blue and asked if he could move in.
NeSmith said yes — but only if Limerick didn’t use hard drugs or alcohol.
“We never spoke after that,” NeSmith said.
Limerick would not return his friend’s calls or letters. That summer, NeSmith said, he got a call that his friend had died of a drug overdose at a Lancaster house party.
The Lancaster County Coroner’s Office confirmed to The State that Limerick died in the county on July 17, 2002. His cause of death was determined to be an “accidental overdose,” according to a county coroner’s report and autopsy report.
Last Thursday marked 23 years since Limerick’s death. He was 31 years old.
“I never forgave myself for his death,” NeSmith said. “I thought, if I would have just let him live with me in Florence it wouldn’t have happened.”
Efforts to reach Limerick’s family were unsuccessful.
Finding Will and finding closure
Seventeen years later, a familiar face flashed across NeSmith’s TV screen.
Seeing Limerick smiling, unburdened and cheering on Clemson football during the national championship game — even for a few seconds — was heartening.
“It’s the happiest I ever saw him,” NeSmith said.
The extraordinary coincidence of it all — the fact an NBC cameraman had decided to focus on a young Limerick in the second quarter of the game; and that six-second clip from a 1982 game broadcast somehow made its way into a 2019 commercial; and NeSmith just so happened to see it — also provided some closure.
“When I saw him in that ad, it felt like it was his way of forgiving me,” NeSmith said. “Or maybe it just allowed me to forgive myself.”
But there was one final step: Finding the full video.
Thus, NeSmith’s social media callout six years later on June 10. In his post, he tagged a reporter for the USC website GamecockCentral.com, Mike Uva, who amplified and shared it with a number of Clemson media members and fan accounts on X.
That post caught the attention of Clemson account @GregTigerGuy.
The owner of the account declined to reveal their real name to The State because it was a burner. Three days after NeSmith’s post, though, the Clemson account replied to NeSmith with a YouTube video link, a timestamp and a screenshot.
The video, posted by the account Husker Football Archive, was NBC’s full broadcast of the 1982 Clemson-Nebraska Orange Bowl. The timestamp was 1 hour, 1 minute, 50 seconds. And yes, the boy in the screenshot was Limerick, 10, in his straw hat.
“OMG … That’s him. I’m literally crying,” NeSmith replied.
“Thank you so very much,” he wrote later. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“Marv, no need brother,” the Clemson account wrote back. “Have a blessed day.”
Watching the video again has added to NeSmith’s peace and closure surrounding his friend’s death. He said it was also special to share the clip and additional memories of Limerick with his daughter, Cameron, a rising sophomore at the University of South Carolina. Limerick would have been 54 years old in 2025.
“He’s like an uncle she never got to meet,” NeSmith said.
And it’s not lost on NeSmith that the person who tracked down the video for him, a passionate South Carolina fan, was a Clemson fan. To NeSmith, it was a reminder that things like humanity and decency rise above the fierce in-state rivalry.
Now he has a new memory of his best friend Will to show for it.
“The fact that someone took the time to find that for me has been a huge blessing,” NeSmith said. “... I can’t thank them enough.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2025 at 8:59 AM.
