But the league itself would have given a left nut for Florida State. If Georgia "sponsored" us, they were just looking for a proximate game they could win most of the time - just as they had been doing. They weren't in love with us as a "rival" but we were a convenient b!tch with a big enough stadium.
But we were playing them regularly in football over the decades, and regularly in basketball as well until 1964 - when Ga Tech left the SEC and the league hoop schedule became more of a double round-robin with few apparently fewer OOC opportunities. That, of course, is also when McGuire came to town. One or the other, but we rarely played the Dawgs in hoops afterwards until joining the SEC.
True, but it did bite them in the a$$ a few times as an unexpected conference loss. We have been less of a push over, with a lot of very competitive games, for Georgia than for many other teams in the conference.
They played us because we were close by and would take a $100,000 guarantee instead of half the gate to go down there. That's the same reason UPC carried all those $2 bills to Atlanta to play Tech all those years.
Missing the point I see. Army and Navy used to be national powers also. The world is always changing. Syracuse was a football power at one time. You know your implication was that Spurrier is gone and we will never reach those heights again. And my contention is we can.
Partner, you can't raise a point I haven't thought of. We could emerge as a power, but only under a premier coach. Not a very good coach, mind you. He gets us to nine or 10 wins on a good year. South Carolina can only aspire to championships under the tutelage of a 99th-percentile kind of coach.
I hope that Shane Beamer proves to be a "premier" coach. It remains to be seen if he is. Yes, we did "overachieve" last season. But, I'm not yet convinced he will be that kind of coach. The jury is still out on Beamer, in my opinion. What do you think?
I don't think we will know in advance who that coach is and say hey, this is the one. When that season happens, King and the rest of us will be very happy men.
I'm pleased with his persona and he seems to be doing some good things culturally. But the road is tough. I'm not ready to say yet what he can or can't do. I think I will be in two more years, though.
Then we are on the same page. Even Muschamp beat Kirby once.
While winning back-to-back national championships and getting back to the championship series for the third straight year then promptly going into administration may have, in retrospect, had a similar momentum-killing effect as Spurrier publically stating that “he may coach a couple more years,” it's not the same.
Oh I totally agree it’s not the same circumstance, I’m just saying both slowed or turned positive momentum. I’ll take the way Tanner left any day of the week. None of us knew Holbrook couldn’t get it done.
Ga was instrumental in helping USC get SEC membership. It says a lot for Ga because they had to know what an effect that membership would have on GC sports. SC is a natural fit for the SEC and invitation came at a crucial time as USC was not a member of a conference.
Natural fit how? Because we are contiguous? Small and not populous state. Major non-SEC presence within the small state. Indifferent football heritage. Insignificant TV market. And as to the the "effect" SEC membership has had on GC sports, football is where it's at. If you ain't relevant in football, you ain't relevant. Relevant ain't struggling to get into the upper half of the weaker division. We're as lucky as a dog with two penises to be in this league. If UGA had a hand in it, they were more than Christian to us.
I don't think the ACC really cared one way or the other on this in 1990. If anything, their coup was preventing FSU's SEC membership.
The closest to a "natural fit" USC is to the SEC is the contiguous border with Georgia, and similar demographics to most of the state schools which made up the SEC membership.
Which always existed. But we didn't belong. They needed an even number and had to settle.
F$U had been seeking SEC membership since the 1950s. I think the SEC thought that by now looking to (re-)expand, Tallahassee would be anxiously awaiting the coveted invitation, and perhaps they didn't pursue FSU as strongly as they should have.
FSU screwed the pooch, but that's a separate issue.
Before we joined the conference, all of the UGA fans I know considered Clemson a rival much, much more than we were.
I've always heard that the FSU college administration made the decision over the preferences of their athletic department. The college administrators were trying to improve the academic reputation of the school and felt that the partnership with the ACC was better for that than the SEC. Lots of different viewpoints on how/why that went down the way it did. Also, I believe all this went down prior to all the large conference payouts.
Those were big games throughout the 80s featuring some top-tier teams.
I bet UGA fans miss those brutal rivalry games with Sewanee and Tulane since original memberships are the criteria for such rivalries
I bet they would be far more immersed in those rivalries than they are the so-called rivalry with us had those honorable, sensible schools not withdrawn once their missions became incongruous with the league they were in. For one thing, had those schools remained committed to that level of competition, there's no guarantee that the SEC would have ever sniffed at us. The University of Chicago was once a Big 10 member and something of a power in football. They decided to go in another direction. Had they not, they would be playing Michigan now and Maryland might still be in the ACC. What else you got?
My uncle used to drag me to Clemson games in the 60's during the Frank Howard era (Gore for 4 was the common phrase from Frank on the TV show highlights) and that was some boring ACC football.
They weren't that hot in the 60s. Frank Howard stayed way too long. Big, slow football teams.
Howard also screwed Clemron's potential in basketball by not giving Press Maravich a raise and not being more supportive of the program.
Sewanee's time as a football power had passed by the time the SEC was formed. They never won a league game in football (over 8 seasons) while a member of the SEC. Not a single game.
They "belong" because their achievements vs. aspirations run at about par for most ACC schools. If they were in the SEC, they would no way belong.
So, they and Chicago did the right thing by withdrawing from their former leagues, as I stated. As for your last statement, it pretty much depends on whether Tulane ever gained any competitive traction.
Back then, in football, each school could pretty much select which 6 of the 11 other conference members they would play each season. Which is how Georgia Tech could get away with not scheduling Ole Miss State at all, i.e., during Tech's 30 year run in the SEC they did not play the Maroons on the gridiron at all. And they played Ole Miss only twice - a regular-season game in Atlanta in 1946, and in the 1953 Sugar Bowl (in that era, the Sugar Bowl mostly matched up SEC members on Jan 1 in order to keep things lily-white).
And the league might have encouraged Vandy's continuation were it ever in question. They add academic cachet to the league and they reside in the conference's foremost entertainment city that also reflects regional culture. This is like a medium-value stock that pays a nice dividend. It pays to keep it in your portfolio, even if it isn't "hot".
This is a marvelous analogy! Given your analogy, is there any difference between Vanderbilt and Tulane?
Willingness to lose, willingness to be well paid for losing, and willingness to derive glory from other than football. To this point, we aren't so dissimilar in terms of across-the-board product. They get their jollies from baseball and we get ours from women's basketball.
