Cancel your Instagram plans. Giant Gamecock statue not ready for USC football season

A giant, million-dollar fighting Gamecock statue planned for a plaza outside Williams-Brice Stadium won’t be installed in time for the 2018 football season.

The 15- to 18-foot-tall bird’s arrival remains on hold because of engineering challenges stemming from its size and shape, University of South Carolina spokesman Jeff Stensland said.

USC had hoped to have the $995,000 bronze statue, paid for with private gifts, in place at Springs-Brooks Plaza before the 2017 season, then pushed that goal back to fall 2018.

Ultimately, Stensland said, the school favors a slower approach over rushing the statue’s installation and needing to make repairs later.

The fighting Gamecock was approved by USC’s board of trustees to great fanfare in September 2016, part of a wave of new bronze statues for a largely statue-less school.

USC decided two months later to erect an $85,000 bronze statue of the school’s mascot, Cocky, near the heart of campus. That statue was unveiled last September.

In February, USC added a statue of its first African-American professor, Richard Greener, next to the campus library.

And USC said in May it would erect a statue outside Colonial Life Arena for former Gamecocks basketball star A’ja Wilson.

The fighting Gamecock’s future home is a brick planter on the plaza at the corner of Bluff Road and George Rogers Boulevard.

It will be near the statue of USC Heisman Trophy winner George Rogers, which was erected just before the 2015 USC football season.

This story was originally published August 30, 2018 at 1:06 PM.