Tuesday November 24, 2009

No!

No!
I had written a USC preview for today and a blog on the history of the rivalry for Wednesday but I was shocked to read recent comments by Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips, so I sat down to crank out this blog for today instead.

This morning’s The (Columbia) State paper has a column in their sports section bringing about the idea of moving the South Carolina-Clemson game to the beginning of the season. Ron Morris is a columnist for the newspaper and he says, “The move to the season-opener for both teams would help the rivalry garner more national attention. It would allow for an entire offseason of buildup to a meaningful season-opener. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it would remove the angst associated with a team having to prepare for the game with one eye on the rivalry and the other on a pending championship game.”

I personally disagree with Morris. First, the SEC will have its 18th championship game this year and South Carolina has yet to play on one. Call me crazy but South Carolina is not much of a factor in the SEC East race each year, so changing the game based upon South Carolina being distracted by the SEC Championship game is flawed thinking.

You won’t catch me going out and buying a four bed room house with plans of me and Carrie Underwood getting married and having three little Plylers running around. It would be safer to wait until we at least dated a few months first.

The ACC will play its sixth title game this year and this is the first year it has been a concern for Clemson.

Steve Spurrier is for moving the game. His Florida teams were 1-5-1 against Florida State in the years he went on to play in the SEC championship. But Mark Richt did not have any trouble beating Georgia Tech in the years he won the SEC East. You never hear Alabama complaining about playing Auburn the week before they have won the West.

Virginia Tech beats Virginia in the years they represent the ACC Coastal Division and the Hokies are 2-1 in the ACC title game. Not having a rival has not helped Boston College who has lost the last two ACC title games.

It’s funny how Urban Meyer has not complained about having to play Florida State the week before an SEC title game. Do you think this has anything to do with the fact that the Seminoles are not as good as they once were?

But I don’t blame South Carolina for wanting to move the game. The fact is that they have been getting their teeth kicked in and they need to blame it on something. Did they complain when they won in 1992, 1994, 1996, 2001 or 2005? Isn’t it funny how it was not a distraction then but somehow it becomes an issue when you get your ass handed to you even though you have never played in the SEC title game?

I don’t blame USC one bit for thinking this way. In business they say whatever your competition is for then you should be against. It is a way to differentiate. USC needs to suggest something different because when lose 10 of your last 12 to your rival then something is broken. If it would help USC then they would want to play it in September. I would not blame them if they wanted to move it to the Friday after Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, October or September. They really should want to move it to June since USC is always so good in that time of the year anyway.

What has me steaming this morning is the comments from Terry Don Phillips who told the State paper, "That's not a bad idea because, if you think about it, you have the whole summer leading up to that game. And, should you not win that game, you have the entire season to recover from it."

Are you freakin’ kidding me? This is absolutely absurd.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Clemson is dominating South Carolina in November and the Clemson AD says it’s not a bad idea to move the game?

This guy has more degrees than names and this is the way he thinks?

What needed to happen is he needed to go ask his football coach what he thought about it before commenting on it to a newspaper. By the way, Dabo told the same paper, "That's hard for me to grasp hold of because my background is the big rival game always has been at the end. Even when I was in high school, the Pelham-Thompson game (in Alabama) was the last game. Then it was Alabama-Auburn. That would be strange for me. I would not be in favor of that."

So the logical thing to do is support your football coach. He is the one that plays the game. If Clemson loses a few in a row because of the championship games and the head coach wants to change it then we might visit the idea but not at this point.

However, I know that supporting the coaching staffs’ priorities might be too much to ask at Clemson.

The bottom line here is that this rivalry was here before Steve Spurrier, Eric Hyman, Dabo Swinney, Terry Don Phillips, you or me. It was here before the ACC and the SEC. It will be here long after any of us.

You should not change tradition. Sure the game was played in Columbia every year until 1959 and it was played in October around the State Fair but that was wrong too. The game should rotate between Columbia and Clemson every year and it should be the last regular season game. That is the way it has been for the last 50 years and that is the way it should stay.

Colorado and Colorado State open the season with their rivalry and Miami and Florida State have a few times. But the Miami-FSU game was a conference game dictated by television and set buy the conference.

I ask, do we want to go the way of Colorado and Colorado State?

Alabama and Auburn have made their decision and they understand that arch rivals play their rivalry game at the end of the year. Florida State and Florida understand that idea also. In fact, so does Texas and Texas A&M, Southern Cal and UCLA, Georgia and Georgia Tech, Ohio State and Michigan, Virginia and Virginia Tech, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, Pittsburgh and West Virginia. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and Army and Navy. Rivalry week is in November, not September.

If you moved the game to the season opener then South Carolina fans would complain about having to play Clemson and Georgia to open the season. Just another excuse.

The idea is very simple. You play your arch rival in the final regular season game. You don’t look for excuses or ways out of it. You man up and play for bragging rights for the year at the end of the year. I don’t care about conferences, title games, television, injuries, weather, officiating, etc. Excuses are for losers.

I don’t seriously think that Clemson would ever make such a mistake but to say the idea has merit or to say, “That’s not a bad idea…” is obviously not right in my mind.

I would say this could never happen but remember a few short years ago South Carolina’s president and athletic director dotted the “I” before the Carolina-Clemson game in Death Valley. The reason that travesty happened was because we all did not know about it in advance and we had no chance to voice our displeasure before it happened. That is not the case with the ridiculous idea of moving the Carolina-Clemson game to the beginning of the season.

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