The rivalry between the Clemson and University of South Carolina football teams stretches back to 1896 when USC was known as the South Carolina College (SCC). In those days, the games were always played on a Thursday in early November at the fairgrounds in Columbia. It became known as Big Thursday. However, beginning in 1912, the date was moved up into October, and the game became known as The State Fair Classic, although it was still commonly called Big Thursday.
The South Carolina Encyclopedia notes that by the 1910s, the game had become "a combination picnic, fashion parade, political rally and drinking bout."
Nell Flinn Gilland, who moved to Kingstree when she married a local boy, Louis Gilland, grew up on the campus of the South Carolina College. Her father, Dr. John William Flinn, was head of the philosophy department and chaplain at the university from 1890 until 1905. Flinn Hall is named for him and was their residence during his tenure at the college.
In 1902, Nell Flinn was one of four young ladies chosen by the Gamecock football team to be their sponsors in that year's battle with Clemson, which some you are aware ended in a Gamecock victory–and an armed riot which caused the schools to suspend play until 1909.
Nell Gilland wrote about that 1902 game in 1929, and those reminiscences were published in The State on game day, October 24. Here is her story:
"When the middle-aged and somewhat disillusioned group of survivors who played on the victorious Carolina football team of 1902 gather Thursday to sit with those of the 1912 team on benches with the coach and squad of today, they probably could not recall, if asked, who were the sponsors of the 1902 team. Alas, the fleetingness of fame! Twenty-seven years ago, they chose four joyous girls to carry with glowing hearts the Garnet and Black banner which floated victoriously over the Purple and Gold that day for only the second game in history begun six years before.
"As for the sponsors, surely I may speak for them all when I say that they can never forget a day which for pure and unadulterated thrills could never be repeated in a lifetime. Bessie Davis, daughter of Professor Means Davis, now Mrs. James White; Floride Barron, now Mrs. E.O. DePass; the late Emma Heyward; and I, Nell Flinn, were flattered by the football squad that year and proudly accepted the honor.
"Little do I know, far removed from such things as I have been for more than 20 years, what being a sponsor means today. The pictures in the annual play an important part now as then, I understand, but no sponsor's outfit today is complete without a corsage. And certainly she must be escorted to the stadium in a decorated limousine.
"But in 1902 (Oh, glorious youth! Oh, simple Southern town that was then Columbia!) we never dreamed of the elegance of "hothouse flowers." Sponsors were driven to the Fairgrounds on Elmwood Avenue in an open victoria, drawn by two, more or less, prancing steeds, with the driver perched upon the box in a brass-buttoned coachman's overcoat that was rapidly turning green. For all elegant occasions, such as the State Ball, these same equipages, only with closed bodies, as it were, were considered the very last word in the sumptuous arrival of a belle of the ball. Her dress might be of 10-cents-a-yard serpentine crepe, of 15-cents-coarse organdy, or even of cheese cloth, for which she paid three cents per, but if her escort, in full swallow-tailed regalia, took her 'slipper bag' from her as he drew her arm on his and gallantly handed her into a 'slam-door carriage,' she had reached the zenith of all possible glory.
"The wheels of the victoria in 1902 were entwined with garnet and black, from the harness floated streamers of the beloved colors, and the driver smartly cracking his whip, urged his sedate team into the semblance of a spirited trot as the sponsors, each gaily waving a sort of shepherd's crook wrapped with garnet and black and tied with flowing ribbons of the same, swept through the gates to a burst of applause and took a strategic position on the sidelines.
"Not then were the fair maidens shown into a decorated box, as now, where they must watch from a decorous distance the exciting struggle. Ah, no! We drove about to see and be seen, and later joined the surging crowd that followed the pigskin up and down the field along the sidelines.
"And what did we wear in 1902? I cannot recall each fetching costume, but describing my own glory may perhaps suggest the grandeur of the rest. Bred on the campus, as I was, I cannot remember a football or baseball season when I did not have some sort of red and black outfit to wear to games, though I cannot claim the distinction of my sister, Margaret (Mrs. George Howe), who was the first sponsor of Carolina's first football team, and herself selected the colors for the team for the feminine reason that they were becoming to her! No such regal glory mine, but whether I wore a sailor blouse with kilted skirt, yoked dress, shirtwaist and gored skirt, or Peter Thompson suit–whatever style and age decreed, mine somehow achieved a dashing combination of the colors for which I should have bled and died far more quickly than for the red, white, and blue. I remember a succession of tam o'shanters crocheted by my own youthful fingers of garnet worsted, topped by a jaunty tassel of black. Long before I was ever chosen sponsor, I had constituted myself mascot of each successive team, and on my Rambler bicycle would peddle madly in the wake of the team-laden streetcar, the boys calling out encouragement to me in kindly amusement.
"In 1902, believe it or not, I still had several teen years left to my credit. But I wore my first long skirt! And that was a ceremony that meant that you had set your feet firmly on the carpet and no retreat was possible. My initial long skirt was direct from New York, with a swishing, thrilling train that slapped at my ankles. With a smooth fitting hipline, it was amply fashioned of black wool voile over a flounced and ruffled black taffeta drop skirt beneath which was worn a similar 'waist petticoat,' also of rustling taffeta, much be-frilled. I discarded for the occasion the popular white china silk shirtwaist (without which no respectable girl's wardrobe of the period was complete), and substituted one of red, tucked from the shoulders to give fullness with puff sleeves ending in deep cuffs. At the back where the placquet fastened, the shirtwaist was securely held down smoothly under the skirt-band by at least three large safety pins, and under the 19-inch leather belt was worn a patent arrangement of intricate design to which the front of the skirt band was hooked down in a point, to emphasize the straight front then so modish. The waist bloused generously over the belt in the fore, and the entire effect was a perfect demonstration of the 1902 silhouette, classically referred to as the Grecian bend. My fetching chiffon hat was pinned with four deadly hatpins above my pompadour, which I achieved by stuffing a black cotton stocking (there were no silk ones) under my front hair, lacking pocket money for a patent contrivance known as a 'rat' and designed to uphold pompadours. The hat brim turned up courageously in front to exhibit the pompadour, and nodding over the whole structure were elegant black willow plumes, as many as you could manage.
"But silken under draperies were forgotten when I trailed along the sidelines annexing cockleburs and dust and germs. Oh, the mad, glad excitement of that victory!
"It is impossible for the youngsters of today to conceive how bitter the rivalry was then between Carolina and Clemson. More than mere desire for athletic championship, it was the outgrowth of years of political bitterness and clap-trap. In our eyes, Clemson stood for all that Tillman and his party had taken away from Carolina. A vivid recollection of my childhood is the early morn when we children rose with our parents to stand in the dawn on the beautiful piazza of what is now Flinn Hall and wave goodbye to departing professors and their families who were forced to leave because of the enormous cuts in the Carolina appropriation effected by Tillman and his supporters. We saw our mother's tears, our father's expression of deep sadness, and we, too, cried, partly in sympathy and partly at seeing our classmates departing with their fathers.
"Thus, Clemson was not only a deadly rival but resented as lessening our former power. Fanning the animosity of Carolina supporters was the fact that teams put out by the school which Tillman described as for "the horny-handed sons of toil" seemed all too powerful to be downed, after the first victory in 1896, by a team from what Tillman scorned as "the gentlemen's college."
"Before the clash of 1902, our family spent a summer at Pendleton, where Clemson summer school students were our constant attendants. To know and admire individuals made us realize that, after all, something good could come out of Clemson.
"But youth is fierce in its favoritism and to beat Clemson was without doubt still a dearer ambition in our hearts than to conquer a city. So, we yelled ourselves hoarse; we beat our hands in a tom-tom until they were sore. There was no band to harmonize our enthusiasm for us; there was not even 'We Hail Thee, Carolina,' to stir our souls and give us back our dignity. We could only chant that we'd 'ride old Clemson on a rail," and that there'd 'be a hot time in the old town tonight.' (Prophetic song!)
"I did not need to see the delightful picture and sports story in The State on Sunday to remind me who played on the team in 1902, nor how each one looked in his grimy uniform after the game, and dear old Bob Williams, coach, whom the years do not appear to have changed. Spunky little 'Rut' McGhee had not yet attained the play that all who ever saw remember still–when the champion lightweight quarterback was thrown completely over the opposing line from the massive shoulders of the center, nor Dick Reid, "big blond giant," who called time out to explain to his coach why the famous stunt had failed in the unforgettable words, 'We th'owed him over, Coach, but they th'owed him back.' They have all been named in the recent sports pages, their photographs shown, but to me that day, they radiated a glory in their sweaty uniforms which could never be reproduced in print.
"As the tumult and the shouting died, we sponsors mounted again in our carriages, taking with us 'Sid' Smith, one of the stars of the day, a dirty, dusty hero with a painfully injured hand. And I, with abandon, not of the perios but born of the heady cup of victory, grabbed Sid's hand and squeezed it in ecstasy–only to be reminded with a grunt of his honorable scars.
"It was my mother's custom during football season to entertain both the home and the visiting teams at a sort of breakfast-luncheon, buffet-style, at her home after important games. Military discipline perhaps preventing Clemson's presence, only the Carolina boys were there in 1902, dropping in before they changed from uniforms to mufti, to go over the game, play by play, with a coffee cup in one hand and a biscuit in the other.
"And that night! Oh, the 'hot time' that ensued! Preparatory to 'Fair week' it was the custom for merchants to decorate one store window for Clemson and one for Carolina, or to come out openly and decorate both for the same college. We were all incensed because a Clemson-supporting cigar store had as its chief feature in a window of purple and gold a great Bengal tiger (advertising, I think, Bengal cigarets), who held in his open jaws a card bearing S.C.C. (South Carolina College) in garnet and black. That the tiger should publicly chew us up was gall.
"But we retaliated. That night in the triumphant procession that advanced on Main Street, the sponsors again rode in their chariot of state, and it was my privilege to clasp the staff which bore aloft that historic illustration drawn by Horton Colcock depicting the arrogant Gamecock rampant and crowing, his claws dug into the head of the prostrate Tiger.
"It was too much. Feelings, born of politics that rended South Carolina in almost a civil war, fostered perhaps unconsciously by home training and fanned into flame by the crowing of the Gamecock victorious at last, broke that night in what might have been recorded as a stark tragedy had it not been for the level-headedness and leadership of Christie Benet, later Carolina coach. Mounted on the coping that borders the campus on Sumter Street, he stood between the Carolina student body massed on their own ground and hastily armed with forbidden firearms, razors, hatchets, pokers, and any lethal weapon upon which they could lay their hands, and the embattled ranks of Clemson cadets with rifles and bayonets in formation on Sumter Street.
"Crouched breathless on our lawn, a few other girls and I waited in the shelter of the original library building. I can hear the ringing tones of that voice as Christie Benet eloquently forced reason on that mob of excited blood-thirsty students and cadets. I can hear the tramp of feet as Clemson broke ranks and walked off down dusty, unpaved Sumter Street, the stifled sobs of boys on both sides–excited to the pitch of hysteria. I can remember how the thrill of victory died in thankfulness that tragedy had been averted.
"Thank heaven for the wisdom of older heads in keeping those two institutions away from each other until six years later hot passion had cooled, and they could meet at the new fairgrounds to hold a love feast at which they buried, with appropriate ceremony, the hatchet which might have slashed throats.
"As they meet today, our children, who yielded allegiance to one or the other of South Carolina's state institutions and who gaily wave the garnet and black or proudly flaunt the purple and gold, cannot plumb the depths of intensity which racked us in 1902. Drab and middle-aged they doubtless think us, never dreaming the fire that was our youth. Born of parents still mouldering unreconstructed, still burningly loyal to the Lost Cause, we were hotter headed than these, our sophisticated offspring. They are cooler, wiser, more tolerant, less provincial and partisan than we. And our hats are off to them as they sing and cheer in well-coached unison for their chosen champions and at the end unite in acclamation and congratulation for the victor, no matter which he be.
"Carolina and Clemson! Thank God, say the survivors of 1902, that bitterness is forgotten. Now the two great elevens meet, each determined not so much to beat the other as to win for themselves. Friendly enemies!"
Clemson won the 1929 game 21-14.
It should also be noted that the Clemson head coach in 1902 was John Heisman for whom the Heisman Trophy is named.
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