‘We’re all family’: USC alumni football game connects generations of Gamecocks
Ryan Brewer looked out onto the field from the sideline Saturday night, wearing a backward hat and a shirt lathered in sweat.
The Gamecock great and noted Outback Bowl legend was part-playing, part-supervising the South Carolina alumni football game. The 2002 graduate helped organize the annual event — like he has every year since the inaugural game in 2016 — and he was monitoring the two-hand-touch game, making sure things were running smoothly and on time, and that no one got hurt.
“Moe’s cookin’ right now,” Brewer said with a smile. And then, right on cue, he and the fans still filling in Williams-Brice Stadium saw Moe Brown, a Gamecock receiver from 2005-09 and a Congressional candidate a few years ago, take a lateral off a hook-and-ladder to the house.
The football on that one play exchanged hands with four different players — four different players with four different USC memories of different generations. And that shared connection is what makes this game special, players said.
“It’s awesome to just have everybody out here,” Brewer said. “No matter what age they are, they all have the same stories.”
He added: “I’ve always had just a passion to bring all these guys together. We’re all family. It is just so big for this university, all these guys coming here and joining all the (current players). So when they’re done, they can come be a part of these alumni and lettermen, who are all here for each other.”
The USC Association of Lettermen alumni game started in 2016, under then-head coach Will Muschamp, as a way to bridge the Gamecock program’s past and present. The event has been postponed and rescheduled a few times since then — one of those times being in 2020 because of COVID-19 — but head coach Shane Beamer has sustained the tradition.
And Saturday night saw 36 Gamecocks on each team in addition to more than 100 other alumni hanging around the field, laughing, reminiscing.
One of those guys playing was Perry Orth. The 2017 grad and former quarterback is now a QB trainer and sells insurance in Columbia. In between throwing touchdown passes himself — a few of which were to former offensive linemen — he would point out players he played with or he grew up watching.
“It’s amazing. I love being back, and I love being out on the field,” Orth said. He added: “I remember when I was there, not that long ago, watching, getting to know the old guys who played before us. … They’re trying to bring the alumni back together with the team to try to continue that bond.”
Tim Frisby, who played receiver at USC in 2004 under Lou Holtz and 2005 under Steve Spurrier, was also out there, trying to evade tacklers. He knows a thing or two about playing with players of different ages, from different generations: After a 20-year stint in the military, Frisby was 39 years old when he played for the Gamecocks — making him the oldest player in NCAA history to play Division I football. It was a national story. Still is.
People call him “Pops.”
“It’s great seeing the old — I say ‘old,’ I’m one of the older players — but it’s good to see players enjoy themselves,” Frisby said with a laugh.
Frisby now works for the attorney general in Columbia, he said. And as he watched his former teammates and older guys — some of whom were players as early as the 1970s — he saw something familiar.
“Across generations, Gamecocks are Gamecocks,” he said. “It doesn’t matter the generation. We all come back together and play together. That’s what it’s all about.”
Many of the players participating Saturday night are still around the game. Deebo Samuel, a star for the 49ers, was out on the field. So were other NFL guys.
Willie Offord, who was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 2002 after an illustrious USC career, coaches high school football at Gray Collegiate Academy in Columbia.
He still feels very much connected to the Gamecock program because of events like this, he said. And that connection was palpable right after the alumni game and right before the start of the spring football game — when the current players streamed out of the tunnel and hugged and shook hands with the alumni near Williams-Brice’s north endzone.
“It’s definitely a family, a brotherhood, no matter what era you played in,” Offord said. “We’re all Carolina Gamecocks, and we’re always going to be brothers no matter what.”
He added: “It’s great leadership to me, when you keep good, positive things going, like this event we’re doing. I just think it’s a phenomenal idea. It gets everybody back around the program, back around each other again. No matter when you played, you left it all out here. And to be able to come back and be around the program, I think a lot of guys will tell you it’s a special feeling.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 9:26 PM.
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