Pride & Glory

by Christopher Paschal 

In the state of South Carolina, three historic colleges play Division I Football. All three were founded before the Civil War. All three have student bodies of less than 4,000 students. Two are private. One is a military college. Each college has a football program that competes at a high level. Each is a member of the same athletic conference. I couldn’t find another Southern state like it. Why should you care? Because Furman University, Wofford College, and The Citadel provide a history that is unmatched not only in the Palmetto State, but throughout the South.  

Wofford and Furman started by playing what is widely considered the first college football game in South Carolina in 1889, three years before Auburn and Georgia, commonly referred to as “The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.” In fact, Wofford and Furman had already beaten, scratched, and bloodied each other multiple times before South Carolina and Clemson started their bitter in-state rivalry. 

Furman was the older of the two schools.  Founded in 1826 by a handful of Baptist preachers (it is one of the oldest colleges in the state), they would go on to put together a proud history on the gridiron.  In 1936, Furman joined the Southern Conference and went on to win 14 league titles, the most in conference history. They have played in three Division I-AA National Title games, winning it all in 1988 under Jimmy Satterfield, who won that year’s Division I-AA Coach of the Year Award. Dick Sheridan had won the same award a few years earlier after leading Furman to the National Title game and accumulating six conference championships over his Furman tenure. (He would head off to NC State after the 1985 season and lead the Wolfpack to multiple Peach Bowls and a Gator Bowl.) A little less than a decade after that national championship team, Bobby Johnson would rally a middling Furman program back to national prominence, winning two conference titles and an appearance in the 2001 National Title game. He, too, would leave Furman, leading Vanderbilt to its first bowl win in 2008 since the 1950.  

But all that was more than a century in the future when the two schools first squared off.  In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem implores his father, Atticus Finch, to play football for the Methodists in a friendly game against the local Baptist Church. Well, that was Wofford-Furman in 1889 – the upstart Methodist college (founded in 1854) battling their more established Baptist rivals from down the road in Greenville.  And although Furman would go on to build a commanding lead over Wofford in the series, things did not get off to an auspicious start for the Paladins. A few weeks later, G. Rouquie described what he saw that morning for the Wofford College Journal. “[T]he football teams of Furman University and Wofford College played a very interesting and exciting game,” he wrote. “Furman’s team did some good playing,” but “left on the afternoon train wiser and sadder men, having learned though ‘they receive instruction in their heads, not feet’ at Furman, a little education of the pedal extremities is requisite to make good football players.” Wofford won 5-1. 

In talking with the Wofford College Archivist (and former professor of mine), Phillip Stone, I learned that Wofford’s early success over Furman was most likely due to the coaching of a Yale Law School graduate, Edwin Kerrison. After his coaching days at Wofford, he wound up in Charleston. Professor Stone also shared some information on some of those original Wofford students that competed in the 1889 Furman game. I read names like Haynes and Clyde and Ellerbe, and of towns like Orangeburg, Georgetown, and Pickens. The 1889 roster looked a lot like the names and places of many of my classmates over a century later. But one name struck me more than the others: J.C. Covington from Marlboro County. I texted my friend, John Rhett Covington who is from Marlboro County. He knew a lot of his dad’s side of the family went to Wofford, but wasn’t positive he was directly related. After looking into the matter, John Rhett texted me back that J.C. Covington was actually his great-great-grandfather. “Pretty awesome to find out that your great-great-grandfather played in the first football game in the state of South Carolina,” he said. 

That’s what I loved about Wofford, and what I still love about Wofford to this day. Wofford is built on tradition, but even more so, Wofford is built on family. That family feeling was not lost on one of my classmates, Hunter Windham. Hunter, now a law student at The University of Alabama, entered the fall of 2013 as an excited Wofford freshman from the Pee Dee of South Carolina. Early on, he found himself balancing football and school. But what he quickly learned was that his teammates and professors both took an interest in seeing him succeed. I asked Hunter what he loved most about his time at Wofford. “The guys in my class were great athletes and great students. We could talk about the triple option at lunch, but at supper we might find ourselves discussing current events. It was rewarding to become friends with so many well-rounded individuals,” Hunter said. Hunter and I took many of the same professors as government majors. I asked him about his view of those professors. “I loved the liberal arts education,” Hunter told me, “I’ve always enjoyed learning, and there are classes at Wofford that transformed my worldview. We have some of the greatest professors, and they do a tremendous job in molding Wofford students.” 

The coaches also helped. “I loved playing at Wofford because of [Head] Coach [Mike] Ayers. You knew you were playing for someone who genuinely cared about you as a person,” Roo Daniels told me. I graduated the same years as Roo. Despite playing on the offensive line during his time at Wofford, Roo was a fan favorite. “I really liked the coaching staff at Wofford. I knew it would be tough to find the academic and football pedigree in other schools,” Roo said. 

But it wasn’t just the classroom experience and coaching that Roo and Hunter appreciated, but instead the fact that so many professors and alumni would go to their games. It made those hot and fast-paced summers (Roo described summer practices as “stepping into hell for a few hours”) and in-season weeks full of classes, workouts, and film sessions worth it. “Students, professors, and alumni would often tailgate outside the stadium. If they ever saw you walking up from the locker room after the game, most would congratulate you on your hard work,” Hunter said, a nod to the Southern hospitality that kept popping up throughout my work on this piece. 

One of those tailgates is run by Wofford alumnus Patrick Fant. A former three-term President of the Terrier Club, Fant has been tailgating in Wofford College’s Verandah Lot for over a decade now. “Chris, I raised my children in the Verandah Lot,” Fant told me. He isn’t kidding. The Verandah Lot, a parking lot shaded by trees which oversees the entire stadium, rivals any tailgating experience I have found in the SEC. “Me and three of my fraternity brothers all got spots together. We bought a large grill and we tailgate and watch the action from the endzone the entire game,” Fant said. But what makes it special are the memories. “All three of my children come back and tailgate in the same spot even though we are all in different places throughout the week,” he told me. 

But in the South, good memories and a family atmosphere only gets you so far when you’re talking college football, even at a school of less than 1,800 students. You have to compete, and ideally, win. Wins and losses stay with you. Triumphant victories and bitter defeats can define you. And they most especially can start a rivalry. When I asked Hunter who he considered Wofford’s biggest rival to be, he answered with two words: “The Citadel.” 

Few colleges rival the tradition found at The Citadel (officially The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina). Located between Interstate 26 and the Ashley River, The Citadel is not only a Charleston institution, but a Southern institution. The Citadel was founded in 1842, sending men off to battle in the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. The Citadel is “a place for motivated people to push themselves to be better,” Dane Anderson, a former quarterback and Citadel graduate, told me. Dane graduated in 2016, but his story at The Citadel started long before then. “Playing at The Citadel was a goal I set for myself at a young age. My dad went there, Class of ’82, and I grew up going there,” Dane remembered. Growing up, there really was no other team for Dane. “A lot of people grow up going to games at South Carolina or Clemson or Georgia,” he said, “but from as far back as I can remember, if we were going to a football game, it was going to be in Charleston. I was lucky enough that it all worked out.” 

But it wasn’t easy for Dane. Nor was it easy for his teammates, linebacker Russell Hubbs and fullback Tyler Renew. “The heat and humidity were horrible,” Hubbs told me, a sentiment shared by all three Citadel Bulldogs. “Brutal,” Renew said. And not uncommon throughout the South, that heat lingers a bit longer than it is welcome, usually sticking around well into the football schedule. But that heat wasn’t all together a negative for The Citadel, according to Renew. “It was tough,” Renew said, “but that is the sort of toughness we carried with us into games with our opponents. We knew that if we could withstand the heat… eventually [our opponents] would give in under the circumstances and environment. The heat was our ally just as much as it was our enemy.” Every week during the season, Citadel football players would wake up at 6 AM and oftentimes wouldn’t go to bed until just before midnight. Their days were full of formation, drills, classes, practices, and meetings. There was no time for feeling sorry. “You were expected to perform at a high level no matter how you felt,” said Renew. 

The Citadel played at a high level when Dane, Hubbs, and Renew were teammates. “Over the course of my four years we had wins against Georgia Southern, App State, and Wofford, which were teams we had struggled against in recent history,” Dane said. Those weren’t the only teams The Citadel beat. In fact, The Citadel would beat a lot of teams, especially in the Southern Conference, the home of a number of FCS programs throughout the South, but most notably the home conference for Furman, Wofford, and The Citadel. In 2015, The Citadel won a share of the Southern Conference, their first title since 1992. In 2016, they won the title outright after surviving an overtime thriller against Samford. “The whole stadium went berserk,” Renew remembered. It was the first back-to-back Southern Conference Championships in the history of The Citadel. 

During that two-year run, The Citadel also beat the South Carolina Gamecocks out of the SEC. “I’d be lying if I said our win against South Carolina wasn’t my favorite game,” Dane told me. “I can’t tell you how many times I’d heard the story growing up about the last time The Citadel beat USC, and to get to be a part of something like that was downright surreal.” It meant a lot to Renew, as well. “I am from Columbia, and all my family and friends went to the University of South Carolina,” Renew told me. “I actually worked in that stadium growing up.” He would score the winning touchdown that day, late in the fourth quarter. “I bet Sandstorm hasn’t been that quiet,” Dane laughed. 

Many non-South Carolinians know The Citadel through the eyes of writer Pat Conroy. I know The Citadel through the eyes of my time at Wofford. The Citadel and Wofford College began playing football in the early 1900s. They have met over 70 times, continuing to play even when Wofford was Division II. From 1967-1998, every game was played in Charleston. Auburn and Alabama battled for decades over where their rivalry games would be played. Not so for Wofford fans. “It was always a good excuse for a weekend in Charleston,” Professor Stone told me. 

The Wofford-Citadel game also shows that two programs on unequal footing can still foster a bitter rivalry. From 1916-1998, not only were most of the games played in Charleston, but The Citadel routinely routed Wofford, going 30-10-1 over a 41-game stretch. From 1999 to present day, Wofford owns the series, going 20-2 over the last 22 matchups. This seemingly lack of parity within the rivalry has not dampened the passion between the two teams. And there is always passion. Nowhere was that more evident than in 2016. 

The previous year, The Citadel had snapped their losing streak against Wofford. In fact, they not only snapped it, but they did it emphatically, winning 39-12. “There’s no other way to put it, we got our ass kicked,” Roo told me. The next year, Wofford hosted The Citadel. To make matters even a bit more interesting, Wofford (foolishly, in my opinion) scheduled The Citadel for Homecoming weekend. Trailing by a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, The Citadel’s Kailik Williams intercepted an errant Wofford pitch and ran it in for the game-tying touchdown. The Citadel would go on to win in overtime. I remember watching The Citadel players run onto the field in celebration and watching the hundreds of cadets that made the trip (and the hundreds, if not thousands, more Citadel alumni) celebrate in the visitors’ bleachers and thinking to myself, “I don’t like these guys.”

I thought that would be the last time Wofford played The Citadel while I was a student. It turned out not to be. Both South Carolina schools made the FCS Playoffs. And after Wofford won their opening round game against Charleston Southern, the rematch was set. Only this time it was in Charleston. It didn’t look good for Wofford. “This wasn’t an ordinary playoff game,” Hunter said. The Citadel was not only nationally ranked but a remarkable 10-1 on the season. “Our gameday atmosphere was loud, especially in 2016,” Hubbs said. I agree, and it was certainly loud for that playoff game. “Playing Wofford was basically like having a scrimmage against ourselves,” Renew joked. “We knew each other so well because we had played each other so many times for so many years… It was always about who could bring out the little extra wrinkle, piece of trickery, or lucky break that ended up being the determining factor in the game,” Renew accurately said. The 2016 playoff game was no different. Asked after the game what they were most prepared for, Wofford fullback Lorenzo Long said, “The Citadel is always physical with us and that is what the coaches [were] preaching to us – we’ve got to out-physical these guys.”

Despite having a freshman backup at quarterback, Wofford was leading by a touchdown with under a minute to go in the game. But The Citadel was driving. That is, until Citadel quarterback, Dominique Allen, threw an interception to Wofford’s Devin Watson, who ran the interception in for a game-sealing touchdown. I’ll always remember Allen running after Watson, not hoping he would catch him, but always admiring how he never quit. After the game, Wofford defensive linemen Tyler Vaughn was asked if there was any respect between the two programs. His response: “Absolutely.” On the other sideline, it was a tough ending to a remarkable season. “They got the better end of the stick that time,” Renew said, “It was absolutely heartbreaking and a memory I have to this day.” 

That was the last game Renew donned The Citadel navy blue jersey. Dane, Hubbs, and Renew have since graduated from The Citadel and have joined a long list of accomplished Citadel graduates. “I don’t think I took for granted a single day that I got to put on that uniform,” Dane told me. 

My brother and I started Front Porch Football almost five years ago, and like many great Southern ideas, the genesis for the website started over barbecue. During lunch, my brother and I were complaining about the lack of original content available for SEC football fans. My mother, fed up with our whining, said, “Well, why don’t you start your own website, then?” In many ways, that’s the same reason I wrote this piece. The national sports media doesn’t care about football at small colleges in South Carolina. In a world driven by numbers and ratings, there simply isn’t space for these kinds of stories. There aren’t hundreds of thousands of fans beating the Wofford or Furman or Citadel drums. In fact, a few years ago, when Wofford played Michigan in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, a stat went up on the CBS Broadcast that read that Michigan had more enrolled students than Wofford had living alumni. There aren’t many of us. There are even fewer that cover our teams. But for those of us who care, there isn’t anything else like it.