COLUMBIA — Twenty-six years ago, two days after the worst natural disaster ever to strike the Palmetto State, South Carolina played a home football game. And 70,018 spectators turned out to see it.
The Gamecocks beat Georgia Tech 21-10 on that Saturday night, but it wasn’t the final score which mattered most. Coming two days after Hurricane Hugo had lashed South Carolina from the Lowcountry to Lancaster, it was a morale-boosting moment of normality for a battered and weary state. And in the days leading up to that game, USC officials mulled many of the same decisions Ray Tanner and Harris Pastides are weighing right now.