Coming Soon...

Gamecock sports have been a passion of mine for a long, long time. I was reminded of just how long recently, when my mother dug up the picture below. It was January 3, 1981. Dad drove me up to Johnson City, Tennessee for the South Carolina vs East Tennessee State basketball game (Carolina won, 71-68). It would have been my first road trip for a game of any kind, and it was the first season I vividly remember pulling for the Gamecocks.

George Rogers won the Heisman Trophy just a month before, and Zam Fredrick would go on to capture the NCAA basketball scoring championship that season. That spring, June Raines led his baseball team to Omaha for the College World Series. I was eight years old, turning nine in a few days time. I was deeply, irretrievably hooked.

Somehow forty two years have passed by. I’m still hooked.

I have paused on the newsletter while working through edits for my upcoming book, A Gamecock Odyssey: South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era (1971-1991). USC Press will release it this November, sometime around Carolina/Clemson week. I still can’t quite believe my good fortune, not just at have a publishing contract for this labor of love, but that it is with the publishing arm of my alma mater.

I’m not a journalist nor a historian by trade, and I’ve never written or published a book-length work before. They are taking a chance on me and this project. I could not be more grateful.

In a couple of weeks I will dive back into the newsletter, and have a number of pieces in mind for the spring and beyond which I know will be fun to research and write, and I hope will be fun reading for you all as well.

Until then, I hope you are enjoying another deep run in the NCAA tournament by our incomparable Coach Staley and crew, and a baseball team that looks destined for big things this season and is bringing joy back to Founder’s Field in the process.

Thank you so much for being a subscriber.

Forever To Thee…