Re: Follow up to the 800 rule and coots leaving the ACC

If my memory serves me correctly (Someone please correct me if I am wrong) the 800 rule was imposed because Clemson and cootU were both recruiting HIGHLY rated Fabulous Freddie Solomon from Sumter. Solomon graduated from Sumter High School in 1971 the same year the coots flew the ACC coop. Freddie did not have a good SAT score and his upcoming recruitment was the impetus for the ACC raising to a 800 score.

Freddie ended up going to Tampa University, now University of South Florida. Freddie would work out with our football team when I was in high school in 1975. We had some fast dudes on our team. We would do 20 yard suicides. (Goal line to 5 yard line back to goal line, 10 yard line back to goal line, etc to the 20 yard line. Freddie would be finished by the time our fastest guys were doing the 15 yard line touch. His high end speed was not great but he was full speed in 3 steps. Great qualities in a route receiver.

Harley®

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Jun 30, 2018, 2:44 PM

There are lots of odd angles around the 800 rule and SC leaving the ACC.

McGuire was a nationally successful coach at St. Johns, in NYC and UNC was nothing before McGuire took the job at UNC. McGuire led UNC to a Natty in pretty short order. Then UNC got his with it's big basketball scandal, went on probation and UNC blamed the probation and scandal on McGuire. UNC forced McGuire out. When he came back to SC and the ACC he was viewed by the four schools in NC as a cheater. He viewed himself as the man who put UNC on the map. So there was no love lost between McGuire, NCSU, WAKE, DUKE and UNC. And McGuire won big at USC and seemed poised to keep the Gamecocks relevant for a long time. I don't think McGuire liked the idea of leaving the ACC. He wanted to beat UNC, lord it over the other schools in the ACC. I think Frank thought he could recruit better than Dean Smith AND coach better than Smith. So I've never given credit to the idea SC left for basketball reasons.

Coach Paul Dietzel had won a natty at LSU. He was a big name guy who left LSU for ARMY (!) hoping to take Army back to the top of college football. But the times were changing and all the military schools were being shut out of big time college football. So Dietzel, with one natty to his credit took the job at SC. And Dietzel immediately ran into a situation where he could not recruit well enough to compete on a national level. Dietzel was a salesman. He got the SC fight song changed. He created the Fighting Gamecock emblem SC still uses. He ripped out the grass from the SC stadium and put in artificial turf. He wanted badly for the 800 rule to go away. I blame Dietzel way more than MNS for SC leaving the ACC.

Another angle is that both Clemson and South Carolina talked together about how they could get the rule changed and what they should do if the ACC would not change. Back then there were a LOT of major independents (ND, FSU, VPI, WVU, GT, BC, Penn State,etc) and quite a few people thought the independent route was more profitable and easier than being a member of a conference. Some say that BOTH Clemson and SC had talked to each other about leaving together and both becoming independents. The joke back then was that Clemson told SC we were going to leave the ACC, SC announced their departure and Clemson said, "Nevermind. We got this legal suit angle and that's what we're going to do."

The move hurt South Carolina. The Gamecocks had a hard time getting traction as an independent. Many of the ACC teams refused to keep playing SC after they left the league. Scheduling was harder in BB than in Football. After a decade of being a lonely, somewhat forgotten independent, the Gamecocks joined the Metro Conference for all sports except football. I think the Metro largely became the Big East somewhere down the road.

Clemson made the best possible decision joining the ACC in the early 50s and sticking with the ACC in the early 70s. We have that 81 Natty to show the wisdom of our decision then. And Clemson made the only sensible decision in the recent scramble and conference realignment to stick with the ACC. We have the 2016 Natty to show the wisdom of that decision.

The folks that move from one league to another most often look pretty silly and it does not often work out well.

Nebraska to the Big 10? How'd that go? TCU to the Big East? Oops. WVU to the Big 12? What sense does that make? TAMU to the SEC? I dunno. TAMU was mostly an also ran in the Big 12. They play the same role in the SEC. Arkansas to the SEC? Huh? No games with Texas? No games with Oklahoma? Loss of natural rivals? Hard for me to see that the move helped the Razorbacks.

SC to the SEC? Yea, I know the Gamecocks like it having a lot of big brothers and pretending to be rock solid SEC program, but the truth is no other team in the SEC much gives a crap about USC. Georgia has Auburn and Florida. Tennessee has Bama and Florida. No one in that league cares much about SC. No one has the game in Columbia on their must see list of places to go. Who is the Gamecocks natural or biggest rival in the SEC?