The Verdict: Be in Charlotte
South Carolina football superfan Chris Paschal writes a weekly column during the season for GamecockCentral called “The Verdict.” Chris is a lawyer at Goings Law Firm in Columbia.
The Verdict: Be in Charlotte
I moved to Charlotte about halfway through my third-grade year and I didn’t leave until I headed off to college. I loved growing up in Charlotte. I love the friends I made in Charlotte. I worked my first summer jobs in Charlotte. I love almost everything about Charlotte. I think it is one of the great cities of the South.
And even I am tired of playing neutral-site football games in Charlotte. This will be the sixth time the Gamecocks have traveled to Charlotte to play inside Bank of America Stadium since 2015.
Three of those previous five matchups have been against North Carolina. Carolina has won twice. It has lost once. But for many fans, that loss in 2019, rather than the wins in 2015 or 2021, gives them that uneasy and apprehensive feeling deep in their gut regarding this year’s opening game. For many Gamecock fans, that loss was one of the worst losses in recent program history. As one of my good buddies told me, “Paschal, that was the day a part of my soul died.” (That man is now a doctor. His priorities have not changed.)
I was in Bank of America Stadium for that horrible game on Labor Day Weekend 2019, just like I had been months earlier to watch the 2018 rendition of the Gamecocks get pistol-whipped by Virginia. Many people argue about what game or moment in time was the “beginning of the end” for Coach Will Muschamp. A strong argument can be made that the 2019 opening loss to North Carolina was that game.
At that time, I was writing for a website I had co-founded with my brother called Front Porch Football. The Sunday after the 2019 loss to North Carolina, I wrote the following: The alarming trend with Coach Muschamp is the paralyzing fear he has as a decision maker late in games… By being afraid to take shots due to the possibility of giving up a sack or throwing an interception, South Carolina ironically gives the other team hope and energy. In a weird way, the more conservative Will Muschamp is with a double-digit lead, the more his opponents play with fire.
That 2019 North Carolina game is burned in many Gamecock fans’ memories. For months leading up to the kickoff of that season, we were told that not only would the offense get a shot in the arm with the return of so many pieces and the addition of Tavien Feaster, but that the defense would be the best it had been in years.
I lost track of the number of times it was mentioned that Carolina had one of the best cornerback tandems in the country with Jaycee Horn and Israel Mukuamu, only for the Gamecocks to get shredded in the second half by a freshman quarterback. North Carolina’s receivers made spectacular catches. Carolina’s defenders missed tackles and dropped easy interceptions.
Don’t get the intention of this piece wrong. This is not meant to be a rehashing of the 2019 North Carolina game. And it certainly isn’t supposed to be a hit piece on many successful players that are still playing in the NFL. Those couple of paragraphs are to illustrate the deep-seeded, vitriolic hatred many Gamecock fans have of playing North Carolina in Charlotte. Not even the redeeming beatdown of the Tar Heels in 2021 removes the bitter taste of that hot, pathetic day in Charlotte.
And despite all of that, Gamecock Nation needs to get over itself. We are needed in Charlotte in a couple of weeks, and it is crucial that we answer the call. Throughout the summer, this opening game against the Tar Heels kept getting bigger and bigger. To be clear, almost every game against our brethren of the Olde North State is pivotal, but this one feels bigger than most. Yes, a win over North Carolina is always important in the constant jockeying for supremacy of the Carolinas. Yes, a win over North Carolina (theoretically) helps with future recruiting battles against the Tar Heels. And yes, a win over North Carolina is always sweet because so many of their fans just think they are better than us.
But this year there is a heightened sense of the now. North Carolina is entering year five of Coach Mack Brown. Despite what Coach Brown may want you to believe – “Everybody’s bragging on them. Nobody’s bragging about us and we did pretty good.” – the Tar Heels are the favorite in Vegas, the favorite according to ESPN’s “Matchup Predictor,” and ranked higher than South Carolina in the season’s first AP Top 25 rankings.
North Carolina has a pre-season Heisman Trophy-contending quarterback. South Carolina has a quarterback who was not even listed as one of the 35 quarterbacks on the Davey O’Brien Watchlist. Much like they did in late-November of 2022, ESPN/ABC has placed South Carolina in a primetime matchup in the hopes of featuring the high-flying offense, and spectacular quarterback play, of our opponent. If there was ever a time for North Carolina to take that next step under Coach Mack Brown, it is now.
This game is much different than 2019. We are not the overwhelming favorites like we were in 2019. And unlike in 2019, our coaching staff is not the one staring at an hourglass that is losing sand with every passing moment.
Nationally, just like many think North Carolina has the better team, many are also expecting North Carolina as the local team (even though Columbia is closer to Charlotte than Chapel Hill) to have the stronger fan support. Despite in a losing effort, Gamecock Nation showed how impactful we can be as a traveling fanbase in last year’s Gator Bowl.
Let’s do the same in Charlotte in a couple of weeks. This team, from my vantage point, has a quiet confidence about itself. They aren’t going to be intimidated by the headlines and notoriety of this North Carolina team. Let’s show that same confidence, but in a much louder way, in Bank of America Stadium on September 2, 2023.
