re: What was the first bowl game you saw your team play in person?

06 Liberty Bowl vs Houston. I seem to remember armed guards.

The 2000 Music City bowl to watch us get reamed by West Virginia

Hall of fame bowl vs. Michigan in 1988.

2004 Nokia Sugar Bowl. Also went to Nashville last year and currently in Houston. Hoping to start a tradition and go every year.

If my memory is correct, all my teams played their bowl game in person..............However I remember a bowl game that we played against Louisville in '91 that they may not have shown up for.

1975 Sugar Bowl where Alabama beat Penn State 13-7. First Bama bowl win in years and also first Sugar Bowl played in the Superdome.

1998 Cotton Bowl.

Incidentally, I've never seen A&M win a bowl in person.

'89 Sugar, Curry's swan song - thank goodness. Miss Homer Smith though.

1969 Peach Bowl versus WVA coached by Jim Carlen, who would eventually become one of our all-time favorite coaches here at SC. He had an assistant by the name of Bobby Bowden.

They came out and ran the wishbone, which we were not expecting, and won the game. It poured rain on us the entire game - we were a passing team who had just won the ACC Championship.

I remember Paul Dietzel saying after the game that "we ran into a perfect storm. The rain shut-down our Tommy Suggs (long time color man for the Gamecock radio network) led passing game while, at the same time, it played perfectly into the gameplan of Carlen and Bowden's newly installed wishbone attack which we had not practiced for unfortunately ... no one saw it coming."

I talked to both Coach Dietzel and Coach Carlen about it some years later and they both said the same thing basically ... it was the perfect day for WVA on a rain soaked Grant Field. They beat us 14-3 and made a couple of goal line stands against us, plus we turned the ball over three times. Helluva game to witness in person though - hard hitting and muddy - I'll always remember it like it was yesterday.

We could not stop that wishbone attack that day.