Tidbits - January 17 2019



  I thought Clemson could beat Alabama, but I had no idea the Tigers would slaughter the Tide. Who did?
  The game ended early in the first quarter with Tua’s pass in the flat that the Tigers intercepted and returned for a score.
  It brought back terrible memories of Carolina’s trip to Death Valley in 1980.
  The Gamecocks were 8-2, ranked, highly favored and George Rogers was a few days away from winning the Heisman.
  But, Gary Harper, 1980’s version of Jake Bentley, threw a pass in the flat and.....
  After Clemson’s interception Monday, I went on Facebook and simply typed, “Willie Underwood.”
  Gary and Willie enjoyed that first score so much, they teamed up for an identical play later, and Clemson beat the Gamecocks 27-6. That was the start of the Danny Ford dynasty.
  The next season the Tigers went unbeaten and won their first National Championship. They can thank Gary Harper for giving them the spark!
  Thirty-seven years later, Clemson was undefeated again, becoming the first modern team to go 15-0. Unless another game is added to the schedule, the Tiger record may be tied, but it will never be beaten. “Never” is pretty good.
  “Best ever” will be brought up by many. There is no real way to determine that, except in head to head competition.
  That’s not going to happen and you can’t possibly think legendary teams from the past could hang with this year’s Clemson team.
  When I was at Carolina, John LeHeup was an All-American defensive tackle. He was 6-2 and weighed 237 pounds. That’s all folks. That was 45-years ago. He would be too small to play tight end now.
  The 11-1 1973 SHS team had two players that weighed over 200-lbs., and one of them was the great running back, Richard Brooks.
  The late Glenn Corley was the only player on the 1962 and 1963 Tiger state championship that weighed over 200.
  I’d like to see the 2018 Saluda High receiving corps race all the legendary Tiger speedsters from the past.
  We can’t compare legendary teams and players from the past with today. Today’s teams, with their size and speed, would kill them.
  The National Champ Tigers only had two close games, Texas A&M and Syracuse, and they found ways to win those games.
  After Syracuse, there was no Clemson win by less that 21 points.
  Sure, they beat middling ACC teams and a middling Gamecock squad, but in order to win the National Championship they had to beat two unbeaten teams, and they did so by scores of 30-3 and 44-16.
  I saw a tweet after the Clemson win that Carolina scored more points against Clemson, 35, than Notre Dame and Alabama combined, 19. The Gamecocks also gained 600 yards against Clemson and the Tide and Irish combined for 695.
  How impressive, except Carolina couldn’t score a single point against Virginia!
  What about next year?
  For one thing, Clemson showed the world that Alabama is human, and can be beat.... really beat.
  That’s good for Carolina. Someone has put out strength of schedules rankings, and the Gamecocks ranked number one in the SEC. Alabama is coming to Williams-Brice next year. We’ll tell Jake to pretend he’s playing Clemson.
  Clemson loses many great defensive players. After they won the title two years ago, and lost so many defensive stars,  I said there was no way Clemson would be great the next year. They made the “final four” again.
  They reloaded, and that’s what they will do next year. There is no one in the ACC who can challenge the Tigers. The offense, behind eventual Heisman Trophy winner Trevor Lawrence, will  be awesome.
  The Tigers will defend.


 Netflix said their movie “Bird Box” has been seen by over 45 million viewers. I’m in that total.
 Not to give the plot completely away, star Sandra Bullock spends most of the movie wearing a blindfold.
  The big rage now is idiots wearing blindfolds, and videoing it in the “Bird Box Challenge.”
  Naturally, people are getting injured.
  Some brilliant teenagers decided they would drive a car blindfolded. A photo was posted  of the damage to the car. Fortunately, the kids were not hurt.
 Can the insurance company refuse to pay?
  “How did this happen?”
  “Oh, we were trying to drive the car while wearing a blindfold.”
  “Well, then, you can pay to have it fixed blindfolded.”
  There was a scene in the movie where the car’s windows were painted over and the car was driven by watching the GPS screen. I don’t think that would work in real life ... and I’m not going to try!
 Netflix, also, released the first interactive movie about the same  time it released “Bird Box.”
  The movie is part of the “Black Mirror’ series, which is a modern “Twilight Zone” type program.
  I set out to watch the movie and was disappointed that I could not watch it on any of my TVs. Because it’s interactive, I had to watch it on my iPad, because it has a touchscreen.
  I had to change my viewing habits, too. I’m reading a book or magazine, or browsing on my iPad, phone or laptop, while I’m watching TV.
  With this movie, however, I had to watch everything, because the choices would be put up at inopportune moments.
  The first choice I had to make was choosing what cereal the father handed the son for breakfast.
  As the movie went along, you could go back and try the second choice.
  There was one choice I just couldn’t choose, “Have him kill his father.” I let the old man live.
  The film is set in the 1980s, and the young man was a computer game programmer.
  At the end of the movie, you had a choice of two symbols. One of them was them was the Netflix “N.”
  The kid’s reaction when Netflix popped up on his screen was priceless!
  The movie lasted about an hour and a half, but I read they filmed over five hours of footage to take care of all the choices.
  I wonder how he killed his father.....


  The Carolina men’s basketball team got off to an awful start, which included losses to Stony Brook and Wofford,
  The loss to the Terriers was  by 20 points.
  They entered conference play as the only team in the SEC with a losing record.
  Since the conference play began, the Gameocks are 3-0, with wins over Florida, Mississippi State and Missouri.
  Fans, who were calling for Frank Martin’s head, are now back tracking.
  How many people forget Martin took the Gamecocks to the Final Four just two years ago? How many other Carolina coaches have done that? Exactly, none!
  The many freshmen on the current team, are begining to play like sophomores.
  They are taking up the slack  of inconsistent upperclassmen, now.
  Maik Kostar, who scored 25 against MSU, only scored four points against Mizzou.
  Hassani Gravett, who had been playng so well, was 0-10 shooting against the Tigers, but went 12-12 at the line.
  Basketball teams can get better quicker than football teams.
  That’s why fans should give Muschamp more time.