re: South Carolina fans, why was Richard Bell fired in 1982 after just one year?

quote:

---

Bell was an interim coach that lost to Furman. Carlen was fired because he wouldn't go along w/ Holderman shifting athletic dept. funds into his slush account. The cheerleader story was probably true but not the reason. When we hired Joe Morrison, the university provided house for both he and his wife as well as another apartment for his mistress.

---

Actually ... well, as I typed earlier, "long story." But I'll try to hit on the salient points very quickly.

There was a lot of political infighting in the early seventies. Dietzel had gotten us out of the ACC after a long protracted legal battle with Tobacco Road in which we won ... that was over both a football player (Freddie Soloman) and a basketball player whose name escapes me at the moment.

There was some political infighting, but most between the BoTs, not Dietzel and McGuire as has been reported. But in '75 we hire Carlen and he also assumes duties as AD, as Dietzel had. Now, there was some bad blood between McGuire and Carlen but not nearly as bad as Herman Helms tried to report it being. I knew both McGuire and Carlen very well and they were very amiable to one another and had a great deal of respect for one another.

The real problem began in '76 when the ACC invited us back to the league, and McGuire wanted to go while Carlen was adamantly against it. Besides, the ACC wanted a million dollars "buy back in" fee and Carlen basically told them to pound sand up their asses.

In '77 the scum bag Holderman was hired and he immediately set about to take power away from Carlen ... so he hired some PIs to dig stuff up on Carlen, but Carlen was squeaky clean.

Holderman was forked-tongue mind you. He first allied himself with Carlen in an effort to get rid of McGuire, but McGuire beat Holderman in the power play and Carlen had managed to stay relatively clean with the BoTs during the entire fight. Had Holderman not been such a fund raiser at the time, he would have been fired quite honestly, but money talked.

Carlen continued to build the program and, in doing so, the fans got behind him and supported him over Holderman. McGuire was eventually forced-out and Holderman hired Bill Foster away from Duke to take over our basketball program. Bobby Richardson was our baseball coach and Pam Parsons was our women's basketball coach ... we were hitting on all four cylinders in the eyes of most of our fans.

Foster bombed, and Parsons was busted for having an affair with a player, Tina Buck LINK ... whom she too is still living with to this day. But Parsons had us in elite air in women's basketball. Bobby Richardson was busy taking us to our first CWS championship games in '75 and '77 ... and Jim Carlen was winning big games and produced a Heisman Winner in '80.

All the while a former Texas Tech beat writer got in touch with Herman Helms (State Newspaper Columnist and ardent SCAR hater) about a rumor that Carlen had an affair with a cheerleader while at Texas Tech. Helms told Holderman and Holderman got the private investigator back on the trail of Carlen ... and sure enough, Carlen was having an affair with a former Gamecock cheerleader who had since graduated.

That was all the scandal Holderman needed in the wake of the Pam Parsons scandal, and while AD funds did play into the overall scheme of things ... it was strictly political, and a power move on Holderman's part ... that led to Carlen being fired. Holderman was losing the money issue ... but he won on the moral issue because our BoTs were still reeling from the Parsons scandal with Tina Buck.

Sparky Woods was considered the squeaky clean solution ... he had just won a National Championship at App State if I remember correctly, and he was known as a devout Christian who often preached, sermon type, to his players.

All the while Holderman was hitting on college boys who were working for him ... taking them on lavish trips, giving them expensive gift and hob-nobbing with celebrities, all on the university's tab.

Holderman would eventually resign in shame and would later face multiple charges for a plethora of different things and would end-up serving time in a federal prison until the age of 70. Where he is now or what he is doing now I do not know. Last I heard he was living in the Lexington area, very low key, may have even changed his name, I dunno.