Students camp, revel, ‘Sandstorm’ before show
Just after 11:50 a.m. Saturday, the Horseshoe — packed with excited fans, many of whom had been there all night — seemed unusually quiet.
ESPN’s College GameDay had just gone to commercial, and fans in front of the pit were hunched over a metal barrier; they’d been cheering for hours.
On Sumter Street, Darius Rucker stepped off the show’s bus in a suit, tie and Gamecocks cap. On set, a Cocky head and Sir Big Spur were hidden beneath Lee Corso.
The climax was close.
As GameDay’s personalities picked winners game-by-game, all eyes were on Corso.
The analyst has long been a controversial figure in Columbia; he once said coach Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks wouldn’t win the Southeastern Conference “in 400 years.” On Saturday, he sent them into a frenzy again — he picked South Carolina.
The Horseshoe erupted, spur hand signs flew up and a “U—S—C” chant rang out.
It had been a long time coming.
The buildup to South Carolina’s romp over then-No. 5 Georgia began in earnest just before 5 p.m. Friday.
A few tents were already set up then, and a few students mulled about.
They were a small portion of the hundreds of tents that would eventually dot the Horseshoe from the set to the McKissick Museum. Thousands of students would wander through them; some sat in circles, alternately holding guitars and flashlights.
They’d dance and scream as “2001” played twice at midnight, followed by “Sandstorm.” Minutes later, a line would meander down the brick paths for the first of a pair late-night pizza deliveries. The students made quick work of the 300 pies.
They did so in greater numbers than the last time GameDay came to Columbia, when USC knocked off then-No. 1 Alabama in 2010. Jerry Brewer, the associate vice president for student affairs, figured roughly three or four times more students camped out for the show this year.
They brought an energy that ebbed little through the night.
Few students and fans got much sleep Friday night, and that goes for USC President Harris Pastides, too.
He’d been out with the crowds with his wife, Patricia Moore-Pastides, and even got in on the “Sandstorm” action, waving his pocket square in the air.
Those who did sleep were replaced, in large part, by the show’s early comers, like Michael and Jacob Branham.
The brothers, both fans from Columbia, came around 2 a.m. to make sure they got a spot in the pit, they said. They stood at the front of a line that would later weave past the Maxcy Monument toward the McCutchen House.
How’d they manage to stay awake? “You just have no choice,” Michael Branham said. The energy, he added, was too much.
Once they were in line, fans weren’t much inclined to move. Eventually, Russell House Director Kim McMahon and a handful of other administrators carried loads of food down from McKissick, where a buffet was set up, to feed them.
And in line, they were emboldened by a sense of dedication for South Carolina — or against Georgia.
Tripp Laursen, of Columbia, fit squarely in the latter group. He came decked in blue and orange, with a Florida flag draped around his neck.
“I hate Georgia,” he said. “Today, I’m a Gamecock.”
Laursen was booed as he ran into the pit minutes later. He responded by doing a gator-chomp motion with his arms.
The handful of Georgia fans that got in were roundly booed, too.
They were outnumbered by the thousands of South Carolina fans who turned out in growing numbers throughout the morning broadcast.
They bore signs predicting “Clowney with 100 percent chance of pain,” imploring others to “Keep calm and Jadeve-on” and various proclamations of Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray’s love of Nickelback and coach Mark Richt’s penchant for wearing jorts.
Those got the OK from an ESPN employee at the front of the line. Others too racy were deemed too libelous. Still, the signs they brought from home showed off an ingenuity of sorts.
One used a duct-taped stack of red cups as a support, another was taped to a hockey stick. In the pit, one sign, made with an old pizza box, showed a ring of grease stains. Told she couldn’t take in a poster on a pole, one woman used a lighter to melt the zip ties holding it on.
She was let in, and by 7:45 a.m., the pit was full and cheering boisterously on cue for the skycam overhead and any number of cameras on set.
And so it went, again and again, until the show went off air at noon.
A few hours later, it was long gone. The set was down, and GameDay’s crew and USC staff picked up bits of trash.
All that remained were a few crates of equipment and patches of trampled grass.
It was a far cry from the morning’s ecstatic energy, an atmosphere that Chris Fowler, the show’s anchor, said helped the crew get through the broadcast.
Hours later, it helped the Gamecocks, too, by overwhelming Georgia with its intensity — and Kirk Herbstreit, another of the show’s analysts, saw it coming.
“The question is, ‘How will they play when they won’t be able to hear themselves?’” Herbstreit said of the Bulldogs. On air, he turned his head toward the screaming crowd behind him — “like right now.”