25 years ago, South Carolina ended long losing streak with 2 weeks of euphoria
Marty Dreesen is standing on a step stool, pulling crumpled receipts and napkins out of the coolest relic inside Bar None, the establishment he’s owned since 1994.
The tradition is simple: Anytime Dreesen says anything wild, his staff writes it down, chucks it into the hollow yellow tube that hangs above the bar only to be read at the bar’s Christmas party. Only then will Dreesen again pull out the step stool and reach his hand into the 30 3/4-inch goal post.
The one that was pulled out of the ground 25 years ago. The one that reads: COCKS 21, #9 DAWGS 10 // SEPT. 9, 2000.
It is the constant reminder of perhaps the wildest, most-inexplicable calendar week in South Carolina football history. Of the back-to-back Saturdays when the team that always lost finally won — and then won again. When, in the span of seven days, Gamecock fans twice stormed the field and twice carried the goal posts down to Five Points.
When the 21-game losing streak died and the euphoria that followed rose like a tsunami that nearly turned Williams-Brice Stadium into a disaster area.
After his team beat New Mexico State and No. 9 Georgia to start the 2000 season, Lou Holtz — a man who built his career at Notre Dame, where tradition is sacred and winning is expected — seemed baffled by the response.
“I’ve been here two years,” Holtz said, days after the Georgia win. “We’ve won two games and we’re on our third set of goalposts. I’d like to think we have a little more confidence in our program than that.”
C’mon, Lou. If hope doesn’t die amidst a 21-game losing streak, confidence surely does.
South Carolina’s losing streak
Jeff Barnes was a redshirt freshman offensive lineman at South Carolina in 2000. His first year at South Carolina was filled with professors walking up to him, saying: “Y’all better be studying because you ain’t winning.”
And, well, what could he say?
The Gamecocks were the worst football program in America. They won their first game in 1998 against Ball State … then lost 10 straight. That was enough to get Brad Scott fired, paving the way for South Carolina to pluck 61-year-old Holtz out of retirement.
What followed was the worst football season in the history of the University of South Carolina. Zero wins. A 21-3 loss to East Carolina. Only one loss (to Vanderbilt) by less than 10 points.
Twenty-five years later, that 0-21 stretch has evolved into a chance for Gamecocks fans to give their sermon on the mound, because they were there. They sat through nearly two years of games at Williams-Brice Stadium without seeing a victory. Sat through an 0-11 season in 1999, when there was almost no hope for a Gamecocks victory.
During those two miserable seasons, South Carolina still drew nearly 80,000 people to Willy-B for home games.
“People were still excited — Ok, maybe not excited,” said Brian Glynn, who worked at and now owns Village Idiot Pizza. “But they were still into it.”
“They still showed up week after week,” added Garrett Humphries, who served as “Cocky” during every football game from 1998-2000. “(Then) the stadium would clear out at halftime because we were getting beat so bad.”
But 2000 felt different.
The Gamecocks’ most important game ever
Holtz was bringing more of his people into the program. Carolina returned a veteran quarterback in junior Phil Petty. Running back Derek Watson — who became one of the best high school tailbacks in state history at Palmetto High — was going to be even better after a solid freshman season. And USC returned most of its defense, which was respectable in 1999.
Even better — the Gamecocks opened the 2000 season at Williams-Brice Stadium … against a cupcake, New Mexico State. If there was ever a game South Carolina had to win, it was this one.
Days before the game, The State’s Bob Gillespie called it, “one of the most important games ever for the Gamecocks.”
Even Holtz, who had won a national championship and coached in a litany of massive games, felt the heightened stakes.
“Am I going to commit suicide if everything doesn’t go the way I’d like it to?” Holtz said the day before the game. “No. But the posse might shoot me.”
Storming the field is supposed to be spontaneous. It is meant to spawn organically, to be the natural reaction amidst hysteria. Supposed to come in the wake of witnessing something so incredible, so shocking that the celebration has to go overboard.
Leading up to the New Mexico State game, it was pre-ordained. After 21-straight losses, beating the Columbia YMCA would have warranted hopping over the hedges.
“It’ll take some of Columbia’s finest to stop the students from taking down the goalposts,” USC Student Body Vice President Corey Ford told The Gamecock leading up to the game.
Gamecocks defensive tackle Cleveland Pickney added, “I’ll be on top of the goal posts shaking it, riding it around Columbia.”
The losing streak is broken
Todd Fitch was South Carolina’s wide receivers coach in 2000, coaching from the press box, wondering if the Gamecocks could convince themselves winning is possible.
“Even though we’re a better team than New Mexico State, obviously, it’s still hard,” Fitch told The State in June. “It’s more mental than it is physical. … It’s just a psyche. They’ve been snakebit for, really, two seasons.”
On this Saturday, South Carolina left no doubt. The Gamecocks marched 73 yards on their opening scoring drive. By halftime, the Gamecocks were up 17-0. The party had begun. When the Gamecocks’ 31-0 win over New Mexico State was final, the race to the goal posts was on.
Many of the 80,814 fans bolted onto the field. Some began tearing branches out of the hedges for souvenirs. As many as 20 scaled the goal posts, shifting back and forth until the yellow behemoths tumbled.
Two-and-a-half miles away, Glynn was working at Village Idiot. He assumed fans had torn the goal posts down, but then he looked left down Devine St.
“There was a mob of people carrying the one piece of the goal post just down the middle of the street,” Glynn said. “I was like, ‘This is insane.’”
By morning, the goal posts had largely vanished. The 18-foot, 4-inch crossbars were placed on the monument of Rev. Jonathan Maxcy (USC’s first President) in The Horseshoe. That’s where John Livingston and his buddies found them before they carried the crossbars back to their apartment.
“We’ve been cutting it up and giving it away,” Livingston told The State.
Another piece was carried into the McBryde Quadrangle by the Pi Kappa Phi and Lambda Chi Alpha fraternities. Their plan was to cut it up into about 60 pieces and give it to all the brothers.
“I’m not sure how we wound up with (the goal post),” Bill Polson, a member of Pi Kappa Phi, told The Gamecock later. “It’s kind of by luck, I guess.”
By Thursday after the New Mexico State game, one three-inch piece of the crossbar was on eBay. Someone was charging $49.99. Little did they know the demand would drop in a matter of days.
South Carolina gets its first SEC victory in years
The Hardee’s on Rosewood offered what it called “The Gamecock Special.” A large hamburger, fries and a drink for only $1.99 the day after a Gamecock victory.
When fans began asking for it the Sunday after South Carolina’s victory, even two of the Hardee’s employees were unaware of the special. It had been two years since it was last ordered.
For a few days, South Carolina fans were milking the spoils of victory — perhaps because it seemed like it might be short-livid. Coming to Williams-Brice next was No. 9 Georgia, which had smacked the Gamecocks handily in each of the previous three seasons.
If South Carolina were to somehow beat the Bulldogs, tearing the goal posts might not even be enough.
“If we beat Georgia,” wide receiver Jermale Kelly told reporters before the game, “I feel like they should probably cancel school next week.”
By halftime, South Carolina was up 14-10. Watson already had over 100 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns. And the Gamecocks should’ve been up by more, if not for Petty tossing an interception in the end zone.
As both teams retreated to their locker rooms, Humphries took off his ‘Cocky’ head in the mascot locker room. He started talking to Georgia’s mascot.
“I’m just gonna let you know,” Humphries told ‘Hairy Dawg,’ “this will be the first SEC game we’ve won in quite a long time. … You will probably want to leave the field early because fans will storm the field.”
Sure enough, a few minutes before the clock ran out on the Gamecocks’ 21-10 win over Georgia — their first SEC victory since beating Vanderbilt in 1997 — ‘Hairy Dawg’ was off in the tunnel before pandemonium struck again.
Humphries, unable to leave the stadium discreetly without people knowing he’s the mascot, remained in his ‘Cocky’ get-up all afternoon. His parents drove him back to Cayce in an Escalade. He rode home on the roof, waving to and high-fiving fans like the Pope.
This was not deja-vu to the New Mexico State game. That was the rehearsal. This was the wedding.
“That was more like the national championship,” said Barnes. “We believed we could compete. But I don’t think, in our hearts, that we would win like we did.”
Another set of goal posts come down
For the second-straight week, those 44-foot-tall hunking pieces of yellow metal fell like the Berlin Wall.
In the season’s first two weeks, the South Carolina athletic department shelled out $20,000 to fix the damage. It had to buy four new goal posts at $2,800 each — $4,000 each when you accounted for labor and installation — and 150 new hedges, which ran another $4,000. That was quickly offset. The Gamecocks sold $27,000 in tickets two days after the Georgia win.
As for the goal posts, they found their way to various bars in Five Points.
The manager of the local night club, Rafters, Bryan Vacchio paid some college kids $500 for their 20-foot section of the goal posts. His buddy, Ducan MacRae (the owner of Yesterday’s Restaurant and Tavern), met him at Rafter’s with a hacksaw and began slicing up pieces.
Down the road, another massive section arrived at Jake’s. It’s unclear if Jake’s owner, Dan Bliek — who also co-owned ‘Bar None’ — paid the kids for the goal post or snagged some pieces as a reward for having a hacksaw to cut it up. In any case, he walked away that night with at least two massive pieces of the metal tube.
One now sits behind the bar at‘Henry’s in Columbia. Another is at Bar None, where it’s been hanging in the same spot for 25 years.
This story was originally published September 11, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
