Per Sparky Woods in 1989 and 1990 the team passed on the Independence Bowl, but 1989 was the year Ellis got hurt and we were getting clobbered each week with DeMasi at QB. Im not so sure we beat Baylor, LOL The 1990 team finished with that last game win over West Virginia after the Clemson game, so the 1990 team had some momentum but no one was graduating.
. After a promising start, Carolina ended 6-4-1. Good enough for a bowl bid, though the university declined the opportunity, deciding to stress academics over postseason play in an effort to clean up the program’s outlaw image.
Woods remembers the bowl decision as an unfortunate one.
“The Independence Bowl called and offered us a chance to come there. Grant Taft was at Baylor and Grant called me and tried to get me to come. He said, ‘they’re gonna take you and us,’ and we probably could have beat Baylor at the time. South Carolina had only been to eight bowl games in the history of the school and never won one. So I should have pushed for that. It fell during exams, and [President] Holderman felt like, first of all, we’d probably lose money going to the Independence Bowl. I thought I was being a team guy, and I really wasn’t. It was really not fair to the players – the seniors especially.”
Despite the good feelings following a nationally televised victory and another six-win season, administrators once again declined an invitation to the Independence Bowl.
Reflecting on the reasoning behind USC’s decision, Woods says, “Same thing. Independence Bowl, and [we were] gonna get Baylor again,” Woods recalls. “I think it was the money (a reference to the cost of travel to the low-paying bowl). We also got a lot of negative publicity about a 19% graduation rate; we were on indefinite [NCAA] probation,” Woods reflects. “I wish I had fought for the opportunity to go to one of those bowl games. It would have been the right thing to do for those kids, and who knows, I think we might have won one of those. That was a huge mistake, maybe one of the biggest that we made while we were there.”
