Becoming an older fan and gaining perspective.

That's a nice little story grandpa.

You are just a kid...seriously, at 65 I have witness a few SEC games. When I was first becoming interested in UF football the era then was so damn different...in 1963 UF went 6-3-1 and I was entertained by the season...back then there werent 34 bowl games and you didnt go to a bowl with that kind of record. I suffered many seasons of heartbreaking losses to SEC teams and the eurphoria of victories.

I watched a lot of Bama, LSU, UGA, AU, Miss St games growing up. Gus like Namath, Larry Rakestraw (UGA qb), Pat Screen, Larry Sidle, Tucker Fredrickson, to name a few mid 1960s players.

quote:

---

I am not ancient (42), but I have been lucky enough to have lived through and enjoyed a lot of Alabama and SEC football in general.

When I was a kid in the 1970's, I grew up in an era when Alabama was dominant. I believed they would win every game and never doubted. It was a great feeling, but childish.

When I was 21 Alabama won the 1992 MNC, and the 1980's had not been horrible. They weren't great, but 1992 and the next couple of years boosted my enjoyment.

Then the bottom dropped out. I learned to support my team even when they were occasionally horrible. I listened to the naysayers, talking heads, and opposing fans talk about Alabama football in the past tense.

Those years have taught me to relish what is happening now. The sun doesn't shine on the same dog's arse all the time. This too shall pass one day. I won't take it for granted, and I hope the ride lasts a little while longer.

---

Well done. I enjoyed reading that and agree with you.

I'm quite a bit older than you, almost a full generation. And I can tell you that you don't have to be a Bama fan to believe your team is going to win every time they take the field, as a kid anyways.

But yeah, you're right, the pendulum swings back and forth in sports.

From a vastly different perspective I can share this with you.

As a Gamecock fan in the 50s and 60s I often heard, from my Dad, that SC should endeavor to be like Bama, should endeavor to be in the SEC. And I remember like yesterday when we hired Paul Dietzel and he vowed to help move us into the SEC one day (because Ga Tech had just recently left), and he began with facility improvements and stadium enlargements almost from the get go. Then he did the "Carpet the Cock Pit" thing and voila, we had astro turf.

We were not a juggernaut sports program except in basketball under Frank McGuire, but we were determined to be great in football and baseball as well and every school kid around here knew it.

That was a long time ago. The biggest difference between a childhood around here, and yours I believe, may be that around here we are not realizing that our day is coming soon - you can feel it. In my case it keeps me young in some ways although I am not that old in my late fifties.

And Dad was right. We do still endeavor to be like Bama in football, only better. ;) And these days we're a full-fledged member of the SEC. It's a point of pride for us, perhaps more than any others in some ways - because we had to really fight to get here. To tell the ACC to shove it up their tobacco road asses. To fight through twenty years of independence. To overcome the Sports Illustrated steroid scandal and Joe Morrison's death. But we made it, over twenty years ago now - and it still feels great to us.

Sorry for the long winded addition to your thread.

I should add a funny story I remember as a kid about Paul Dietzel and LSU.

Pepsodent Paul, as we called him back then, (because of his white toothed smile), before he left LSU he had made schedules for a few years in advance. Then he went to Army for three years where he had the distinct bad luck of having to face at QB at Navy all three years, by the name of Roger Staubach.

So we hire him away from Army and he comes down here and who is the first team we play his first year? LSU ... he had scheduled SC as the easy-win opener for LSU in '66, so it was a bit of irony that he was having to go to Baton Rouge now as the head coach of the Gamecocks.

It was actually a well-fought game but SC lost a half dozen players for the season in that game and we did not finish well. But within a few years Dietzel had built-us-up a little and we won the '69 ACC Championship.

We were so sure we would be invited to play in the SEC when we told the ACC to shove it up their collective asses in 71. We had no idea it would take twenty years, 1991, before we would actually get the offer - but we never doubted that we would one day.

Dietzel put it in our heads. He just came back this past year when we inducted him into the South Carolina football Hall of Fame.

Let me sit on your lap and tell it again!













Jk, good post

Try being a 50 year old Missouri Tiger fan for a while and then talk.

Missouri fans carry scars that will never fade yet we carry on!

Go Tigers!