South Carolina rivalry is an American collegiate athletic rivalry between the Clemson University Tigers and the South Carolina Blood orange season 2021 Gamecocks. Carolina rivalry is an in-state collegiate rivalry. In 2014, the annual football game between the two schools was officially dubbed the Palmetto Bowl. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the November 28, 2020, meeting of the two football teams was cancelled, ending an unbroken streak of 111 years of games.
Clemson rivalry did not start innocently or because of competitive collegiate sports. The deep-seated bitterness began between the two schools long before Clemson received its charter and became a college. South Carolina College was founded in 1801 to unite and promote harmony between the Lowcountry and the Backcountry. The Democrats returned to power in 1877 following their electoral victory over the Radical Republicans and promptly proceeded to close the university.
Benjamin Tillman emerged in the 1880s as a leader of the agrarian movement in South Carolina and demanded that the South Carolina College take agricultural education more seriously by expanding the agriculture department. M featured practical training without unnecessary studying of the liberal arts. M provided poor students work-scholarships so that they could attend the college. There were too few students who studied agriculture at the college to justify an agriculture college there. The college was a place “for the sons of lawyers and of the well-to-do” who sneered at the agriculture students as if they were hayseeds.
There was not enough farm land near the college to allow for proper agriculture study. The most advanced agriculture educational research was being conducted at the University of California and at Cornell University, both of which combined agriculture colleges with liberal arts colleges. The work scholarships attracted the lowest quality of students who only cared about obtaining a college degree, not about an education in agriculture or mechanical studies. Furthermore, there was little advantage of attending a college only to pitch manure and grub stumps. The constant attacks by Tillman on the college caused many to doubt whether state support for the institution would continue.
As a result, the enrollment numbers were not impressive, although the numbers of students taking agriculture and mechanical classes increased from 34 in 1887 to 83 in 1889. Over half of the students at the college were the sons of farmers, though most did not study agriculture as Tillman wished. While some students at the college were the sons of the well-to-do, the majority were poor. 1887, just one mile from campus. Tillman was bolstered in 1886 when Thomas Green Clemson agreed to will his Fort Hill estate for the establishment of an agriculture college. It was less than ninety days when Tillman reemerged on the scene upon the death of Thomas Green Clemson in April 1888. Tillman advocated that the state accept the gift by Clemson, but the Conservatives in power opposed the move and an all out war for power in the state commenced.