It’s time to settle who the real USC is

Earlier today, I was reading through our VTM contributor group messages and Ryan, our resident graphic artist, put out this weekend’s infographic.

The thing that caught my eye was #WreckUSC. I thought to myself, “Does anyone truly call South Carolina USC?” To my surprise, I found that many Gamecocks and east coasters use the acronym USC to describe South Carolina. Wikipedia even describes this in South Carolina’s athletics page that “South Carolina usually calls itself “Carolina,” “USC,” or “SC” in athletics.”

So do Gamecock students hide this fact from the rest of the country?

Apparently not, South Carolina retailers do in fact have a bountiful amount of merchandise for Gamecock faithful to rep “USC”.

Now let’s focus for a bit. Everyone outside of the Carolinas know who the real USC is. The fighting trojans of Southern California have been USC for as long as I can remember. I’m willing to bet that a good amount of people don’t even know what USC actually stands for but they know it represents that school in LA.

You might not be able to purchase much of this merchandise anymore. Back in 2010, South Carolina and Southern California took their battle to another SC, the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld a ruling that South Carolina could no longer use their the intertwining logo. “USC’s lawyers also took the opportunity to publicly ridicule the Gamecock as ”a goofy little chicken” unworthy of the mark of the Trojan.” Ouch, the truth hurts.

Let’s be real though, this isn’t the only identity crisis South Carolina has on their hands, look at their jerseys.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Last I checked, the school that goes by Carolina wears light blue. Heck, they even have a distinct color with the Carolina name distinctly representing that university. Not to mention, the Carolina Panthers and the Carolina Hurricanes seem to both play in the state directly north of Columbia, South Carolina.

South Carolina just can’t seem to find a win, nor will they find a win this Saturday when they take on our Texas Tech Red Raiders. Wreck ‘Em.