You could say things went downhill from here, but that would be a gross understatement.

In 1980, the Heisman ceremony wasn’t televised, and was held on a Monday afternoon. Most of us found out that George Rogers had edged out Pittsburgh defensive end Hugh Green for the trophy via radio. My, how times have changed.

Below is The State paper from the following day, December 2, 1980.

Here’s to you Big George!

Always sound advice, but in light of today’s events, we ask you all to be diligent.

TRC Unleashed returns with special guest Brandi (aka @bclickclack), who fills in for Gman who may never be asked back on the show. Among other things we ramble on about:

• The Trayvon Martin case (what?)
• Who is Twitter’s Aaron Hernandez
• Buck says “New Orleans” when he means “New England”
• The beginnings of our Gamecock fandom
• Buck gets mixed up on his first college football game
• BUCK DROPS BOMB
• Some random moments from the 80s and 90s
• How we appreciate guys like Bryson Allen-Williams and Devin Washington

Click this link or the TRC graphic to listen, and enjoy!

Now that baseball season is over……WHY ARE YOU BUNTING YOUR NUMBER THREE HITTER IN THE FIRST INNING?!?! MOTHERFRIGBOTJAIDOAKEAMFAEIOPDAOJRFIAONGUEAPUEPAS!!!!

[Deep breath]

Sorry, NOWWWWW that baseball season is over, we move on to a dead fifty or so days to speculate about our team/depth chart/schedule/the first offensive play we run against UNC/whether we should incorporate garnet helmets/pics of Spurrier with his shirt off/etc. Then  in August players will report and in the five minutes before practice closes we’ll get to see who looks awesome in pass skels/who really worked hard over the summer/whose punts are going higher/where is D.L. Moore?

Until those glorious days we have to kill time with something, so the word “kill” makes us think…how about a blog post about Jadeveon Clowney? Haven’t seen a new one of those recently. And by recently I mean Guy Pearce in Memento recently. As in the last ten minutes.

(If you don’t get the reference, another great way to kill time this summer is to watch that movie.)

Anyhoo, earlier this week we were having a friendly word fight death match with something called @MaizenBrew, who tweeted a couple of really dumb things about J.D. and “The Hit”:

(We fully acknowledge we baited these responses, because Twitter is fun that way.)

These tweets are laden with understandable bitterness. I mean, they watched their little guy get destroyed day after day after day on ESPN in what will be a strong contender for play of the decade in college football. How could you not get sick of your guy getting humiliated at least twice a day for months?

That made me think – are people really getting sick of the magnificent (h/t Andy Demetra) Jadeveon Clowney? Is he overexposed?

We decided to get sciencey and create a chart which shows exactly how much #7 is overexposed, separated by fan base and Tajh Boyd:

Obviously South Carolina fans can’t get enough of Clowney. They show up well below the overexposure line, and will probably never come close to it no matter how many helmets he separates from heads.

In yellow is college football fans in general. This number would probably be below the Clowneyline if not for Michigan fans. I think college football fans across America love J.D. and his exploits for the most part. But the Michigan fans’ utter hatred for “The Hit” pushes the entire group into overexposure territory.

The blue bar is for SEC fans, and much like Michigan, UGA pushes that number into plus territory. Because of two years of stuff like this:

The Clemson bar passed “0” in the fourth quarter of the 2011 game, and the plus number quadrupled as the 2012 game came to a close.

The final bar – Tajh Boyd. Tajh has consistent nightmares about the garnet 7 chasing him on the field, through the tunnel, up Assembly Street, and clear past the sundae bar at Golden Corral. It’s horrific, thus his ultra-high overexposure number.

The thing is, for Carolina fans, we should really enjoy the next few months of hype for perhaps the greatest athlete we’ve ever seen on our campus.

For everyone else, you should probably enjoy this time prior to the season actually starting. Because once it starts, it means he’s going to be lining across from your guy.

And it ain’t gonna be pretty.

In honor of the start of the 2013 NCAA Baseball Tournament, we revisit the final out from South Carolina’s victory over Florida at the 2011 College World Series with this infographic.

TRC Unleashed would like for you to believe they talked to Trey Dyson about the upcoming NCAA regional this weekend, but there’s no proof it actually happened. You’ll just have to trust us, and instead of hearing Mr. Dyson listen to us talk about:

• Rage Against the Machine
• The NCAA Regional (with Trey Dyson’s real thoughts)
• Frustration and/or excitement over having Clemson in our regional
• Shawn Elliott media guide photo (!!!)
• If we had 24 hours with Steve Spurrier…
• Gamecock traditions we could live without
• Our Twitter followers who have injured themselves during games (thanks to all who participated!)
• TRC walk-up songs
• THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA

It’s a technically unsound, raucous and classy time all rolled into 30 odd minutes.

Click the graphic to listen, and enjoy!

There is a familiar refrain from the Steve Spurrier era at South Carolina that has become much less familiar recently:

“Don’t worry, Spurrier ain’t going to be there long.”

When the HBC took over at USC in 2005, conventional wisdom said he would stick around 5-7 years and then head off into the sunset for endless rounds of golf. Now, as he prepares to start his ninth year as the Gamecocks’ head man, the end of his tenure is nowhere in sight.

Maybe the greatest evidence has come in the last week, with the commitments of DJ Neal and Shamiek Blackshear – kids who will not finish high school until 2015.

Why is this important? Because since the start of Spurrier’s reign at USC, those who have gone against him have continually whispered in the ears of young recruits, “he won’t be there.”

And around 2007-2008, not only was it believable to recruits, it was believable to fans like us as well. Success did not come quickly or easily for the South Carolina program under Spurrier. He built on the  mediocre seasons of Lou Holtz with only slightly more mediocre seasons.

Spurrier himself admitted after both the 2009 Outback and 2010 PapaJohns.com bowl disasters, the latter after a breakthrough win over Clemson, that he considered calling it quits.

But since the start of the 2010 regular season (not coincidentally the same time Marcus Lattimore arrived) the Gamecocks have gone 31-9, won their first SEC Eastern Division Championship, have had back-to-back 11-win seasons and two top-10 finishes.

When Tbone and I saw Spurrier at FanFest in Atlanta two weeks ago, he looked as energetic and happy as we’ve ever seen him. Tbone speculated that maybe an SEC Title in 2013 would be the perfect time for Spurrier to exit the program. I told him I’m not sure if we won a NATIONAL championship he would leave. He’s having too much fun right now, and I’m really not sure what he would do with himself outside the game.

This passage from a recent Charleston Post and Courier article spoke volumes:

Yet both he and Jerri still maintain their own lives, independent of the kids and grandkids. Jerri coordinates activities like the team’s parents association breakfast on the morning of the spring game. Jerri teaches a fitness class at USC’s student gym. She has two courses remaining for a second bachelor’s degree, in psychology, and hopes to work with depressed and suicidal youths.

“(Taking classes) kind of gets me where I get to be somebody else,” Jerri said. “I do it for me, and I think everybody needs to do something for them.”

For Spurrier, that is football, forever football.

“I dread the day that we’re not doing this, because it’s my life,” Jerri said. “It’s what I do, too. It’s what we do.”

Doesn’t sound like Jerri’s ready to give it up any time soon, and that tells me Steve is probably not ready to give it up either.  

So is Spurrier telling recruits Neal and Blackshear that he’ll still be around when they finish their college careers in 2019 or 2020? I have no idea. But at this point it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Spurrier loves football, and he loves South Carolina. I think he might stay a while.

The TRC triumvirate take to the airwaves once again to try to make a podcast out of thin air. Lots of shout outs in this podcast, so be sure to listen to see if you get a mention. Perhaps our most special guest? Siri drops in to take a shot at Dabo and Clemson.

Other topics:

• Atlanta FanFest – what we learned
• Drew Barker and the cult of the insider
• Which out of conference games frighten us in the fall
• Open mic – we take questions from our followers
• Baseball been very, very good to me
• Are there too many podcasts of course there are too many podcasts

Click the graphic to listen, and ENJOY!

If you are a Gamecock fan this photo is just funny. Unless you have a stick up your butt.

I was surprised to see the reaction of some Gamecock fans to this photo, calling it rude and disrespectful. As a father of two kids, without the photo’s proper context I can see that. Mocking an adult the way these kids are is a little disrespectful, no doubt. 

Until you consider who the “adult” is. He’s the guy who did this:

We’ve been on the wrong side of this rivalry in football for way too long. And for too long we’ve had to deal with unimaginative name calling and scoreboard pointing. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and I’m not opposed to stepping on few orange tinged fingers along the way.

Now, I’m not condoning vandalism by any stretch of the imagination. But I’ve never been opposed to a little low brow humor or clever trash talk.

Or kids, unbeknownst to Dabo, throwing up the four-peat sign during a photo-op. That’s just genius.

High four kids, nice work.