Orange Crush not what it used to be

Gerald Dixon has no idea what Orange Crush has to do with South Carolina football.

And Patrick McFarland thinks that’s great.

“That’s amazing, because that was something that was talked about before the season, during the season and during that stretch of games,” said McFarland, the executive director of the Gamecock Club.

For lifelong Gamecocks such as McFarland, the Orange Crush brings back painful memories of when the late-season stretch against citrus-hued Tennessee, Florida and Clemson often meant three losses and a deflating end to another football season. For new Gamecocks such as Dixon, a junior defensive end, the Orange Crush is ancient history.

McFarland is happy people can forget. From 1993-2000, South Carolina’s final three games of the regular season always were against Tennessee, Florida and Clemson, in that order. In that span, the Gamecocks were 2-22 in those games. From 2001-2010, the opponents were broken up with other games in between, but South Carolina’s fortunes didn’t improve much. It finished 6-21 against the Big Oranges in that stretch.

While the Clemson game brought its own pain, the losses to the Volunteers and Gators kept the Gamecocks relegated to middle-of-the-pack or worse in the SEC East.

“Those are teams that we looked at and said, ‘Maybe, one day we can compete,’ ” McFarland said.

The change came in 2010. In the four seasons since, South Carolina is 10-2 against the Orange Crush portion of its schedule.

“Success against those teams has definitely helped the confidence of all Gamecocks,” McFarland said.

It’s also greatly boosted the bottom line for South Carolina, which has won 42 games and an SEC East title in the past four seasons. Closing strong has been a key to that success. The Gamecocks won their final four games in 2011, final five in 2012 and final six last season.

They will need a similarly strong finish to salvage a season that has seen them fall from No. 9 in the nation in the preseason to 4-4 overall. As usual, Tennessee, Florida and Clemson remain to be played. The Volunteers (3-5) are first, coming to Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday for a 7:30 p.m. game.

“We’ve got three of the four big games left,” coach Steve Spurrier said. “They’re all big games, but if you think about our rivals in the conference, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, to me, are the three biggest – maybe Kentucky is going to be one pretty soon, because they beat us this year, and then, of course, instate, the Clemson game – yeah, we’ll see what we can do.”

The Gamecocks will have to get at least one win against the old Orange Crush trio to become bowl eligible this season and, probably, need at least two to send their fan base into the offseason with a spring in its step.

McFarland compared South Carolina’s strong finishes of late to the old way to the difference between birdieing or bogeying the final hole in a round of golf.

A birdie “makes you want to keep playing,” he said. “I think that is the same thing with our fans and the season. It makes you look forward to the next season even more. It gets you fired up about next season and doing it all over.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2014 at 9:30 PM.