I got this from another website, and I thought it was brilliant. Lots of good, valid historical data in here, and reading this, I have no problem with us leaving. I put this in the Hoops Central area because most of the information is related to Gamecock basketball. I should add that personally I was very young and living up north when all of this went down. If anyone remembers these events and wants to chime in, I would love to read and learn more!
According to the author, there were several reasons why we left the ACC. Here goes:
A double standard from the ACC toward USC than any other school was a key element of friction. If a student-athlete's eligibility came into question, he had to stop playing until it was determined if he really was eligible to play or not. Sounds reasonable until you realize that this was for USC only, while any other ACC school could allow their kids to keep playing unless it was later determined something was wrong. This stemmed from a situation that was created by certain ACC bigwigs which is mentioned in the next paragraph.
Right before Frank McGuire's death, some ACC officials met with him and told him that they had plotted to keep out of the league what was Frank's biggest recruit ever (Mike Grosso...some considered the second highest rated HS kid his senior year behind one Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul Jabbar). They came to ask for his forgiveness before he died. UNC and Duke, among many others, wanted this kid, too, but he snubbed them in favor of us. He enrolled at USC and was looking forward to being able to play the following year. Grosso and the other Freshman that came to Carolina with him, routed the varsity when they played.
His uncle ran and owned a small bar and he (the uncle) was the one and only employee. He paid for the tuition of his nephew and wrote it on a check that had the bar name on it instead of a check in his personal name. This was not a violation by rules of the NCAA. Turns out that Eddie Cameron, of Duke, who had hated McGuire, got ACC support to create a new rule to circumvent things and hurt McGuire, USC, and this innocent kid. Duke and many other ACC teams recruited Grosso, but were spurned by him. Grosso scored a 789 on his SAT. Back then, Freshmen could not play varsity sports, so he came to play on the Frosh basketball team. Nine months after his enrollment, the ACC created a new rule saying that any student with less than 800 on the SAT could never play in the ACC.
To further things, the ACC made an internal review of his recruitment. I read a version (which I cannot verify the source as being accurate...namely off one of the ACC school sites discussing the matter months ago) of this where ACC people barged in on the Grosso family in the middle of the night and gave them the third degree to pressure them in hopes of uncovering some viable evidence and deemed that since the check was written on a business account instead of a personal account, that a violation had been made, as if to somehow justify their new standards held against Grosso. While the ACC investigators did not find real proof (admission of guilt or paper trail of money being sent to the family, etc.), their investigators decided the family could not afford to pay his tuition. I guess that shows why Grosso's parents did not pay it and his uncle did, with money from his own business of which he had no employees.
He blew out his knee, transferred to Cincinnati and never had the career most thought he would, yet still had enough raw ability to become a member of their Hall of Fame and have a one year in the NBA. I read an article recently about him, written a couple of years ago, where he said he has had a difficult life with relationships and such and until the last few years remained haunted by what happened to him and he never forgave the ACC for doing what they did to him.
According to Bobby Cremins, everyone loved Mike and whenever Carolina played either Duke or UNC, Coach McGuire would say to the team, "Remember, these are the guys that got rid of Mike." Cremins said it fired everyone up and he felt like killing them. "To him, this was the incident that started the ACC hate against USC and it grew when Roche became a star.
UNC was found to have been allowing, for many years, two kids each season, that did not meet standards to enroll at that school and play football. Paul Dietzel, who had been trying to slightly lower the bar to compete with the SEC schools and other conferences for local kids, found out about it and asked the same thing be allowed at USC. His request was denied. When he protested about UNC doing it, they stopped, but were never penalized for their own violations of ACC law.
The funny thing was, USC was decades ahead of its time trying to convince the ACC that football was the real cash cow of the conference (and all of college sports), not basketball. We were sick and tired of losing our best in state players to the SEC because the requirements were significantly higher, set by the ACC, not the NCAA. We wanted to meet the lower standards so that our student-athletes could get into school more easily and improve the product brand of the ACC. We were denied this attempt and it came to be that every time we brought a subject up for a vote that we introduced in an attempt to help the ACC, it was voted down in unanimous fashion by the other schools, 0-7. This was the result of, no doubt, more collusion and secret arm-twisting by UNC and Duke. USC was the league doormat for ages in most sports, basketball being the king sport in the ACC, made that all the more pleasing to the Tobacco Roaders. When Frank built a team that started beating them, it inflamed their hatred of him and us and the state of South Carolina.
Some very few people say that leaving the ACC was the worst thing we ever did. If you were alive back then and old enough to have to remember those days, you would disagree, vehemently. Think of the rivalry and hatred most feel toward Clemson. Multiply that by four or five times and you would be close to the hatred the ACC had for us and we for them, basically all because we simply wanted equal treatment and for the ACC not to be ruled by, UNC and Duke.
The famous fight with Maryland? I was actually there, because as a kid, I was at every home game. Its cause was due to Maryland players throwing elbows all game long and Lefty did nothing to stop his kids doing it. With 5 minutes left in the game, we were winning by about 25 points, nearing 100 points, and a Maryland player took a cheap shot at Rick Adylett, hitting him in the head, as drove in for a lay up. Enough was enough, and our kids let them have it. Lefty got what he deserved for not pulling his cheap shot artists with the elbows.
After that point and the very unflattering Sports Illustrated issue on John Roche and the team, it was impossible to stay in the league. Each time our kids traveled, let alone fans, they were cursed with extreme profanity, hung Roche in effigy, had trash thrown at them, heated coins, gum tossed in their hair, threats were made and cruel taunts were made about Frankie, Jr., McGuire's boy, a young teenager who had a severe case of Cerebral Palsy, which left him with the capacity of about a two year old. Several times, Frank had to be restrained from going into the stands at away games (Clemson) because of those taunts.
When USC won the 1971 ACC basketball tournament, 52-51 on a last second shot, two or three seconds after the game concluded, someone pulled the plug on the broadcast, refusing to show the Gamecock fans or their team celebrating their biggest and best victory. That is the only time that has ever happened, so it was intentional. You can bet that if UNC won that game, every celebration, every award would have been broadcast, like it has been every other year and they probably would have interviewed the guy who had the job to lock the building up at night. Additionally, there were co-MVP's of the tournament. Only one award was available at the end of the game, of course. Instead of giving it to John Roche, the guy on the team that just won the tournament, they gave it to the other guy, on the team that lost, who played for UNC. I saw an article about Roche not too long ago and when asked about that, he mentioned he never received his award. He really didn't care since he doesn't display any of his memorabilia.
Even back then many, many Clemson fans pulled for USC in basketball because, they too, hated the ACC teams and they couldn't beat any of the powers. In fact, Clemson had agreed to pull out with USC to try to force the ACC to change. USC wanted to do a joint withdrawal, at the same press conference, but Clemson asked us to do it in the morning and they would follow in the afternoon. The story is that word got out to ACC people about what was about to happen and they met with Clemson and told them to stay in the ACC or they would be turned into the NCAA for another series of football recruiting violations. Stay and everything would be forgotten. They did not keep their word to us and we left the ACC, alone.
I vividly remember that day and the USC fans were joyous, such was the hatred of the ACC. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted from us. Freedom!!! We were tired of being the red-headed stepchild. To this day, I despise the ACC and am angry that we ever play any of them, in any sport, unless it is in a bowl game or NCAA's where we have no choice, and I even include Clemson in that group. If Clemson had followed through, I believe our rivalry would not be nearly as bitter as it is today.
Some forget (and this incident was before my time following the team) that Duke (again) got pissed at McGuire and USC and they actually were allowed by the ACC not to play us for a basketball season. If we had tried to request such a thing, you know darn well it would have been refused. Shortly before we decided to leave the ACC, Maryland and a few other ACC teams were making comments that they would refuse to play us again as long as McGuire was our coach.
Few recall that a few years after we left the ACC and before GT joined, we approached the ACC to rejoin as the SAT standards had been dropped to a level similar to what we had wanted (two months after we left the conference) and we also felt some of the raw emotions and bitterness may have subsided by then. The ACC agreed to let us back in if we did the following:
* Pay a fee to be readmitted (nothing wrong with that)
* Not be eligible to play for any ACC title for at least 3 years. (spite)
* We had to repay the ACC all the money they would have gotten from us for gates, TV appearances, etc., from the moment we left the conference, just as if we had never gone, even though they did nothing to earn that money. That probably would have added a couple million to pay out, at least. That was lots of money, back then. (greed)
* We had to offer a public apology to the ACC for ever leaving and admit we were wrong in doing so. (humiliation)
* Promise to never leave the ACC, again. (removal of our last right of protest)
All of that was in The State Newspaper or Columbia Record and I remember reading it as if it were yesterday. That was proof that the ACC would still treat us like garbage and we made the proper response by telling them to stick it in their collective ears.
The best day USC ever had in sports was the day we joined the SEC, regardless of the high level of completion, for they treated us as complete equals. That is all we ever wanted. From this we have great pride in our new conference and appreciation for anything positive that results within. The second best day was the day we left the ACC only because it eventually led us to the SEC.
According to the author, there were several reasons why we left the ACC. Here goes:
A double standard from the ACC toward USC than any other school was a key element of friction. If a student-athlete's eligibility came into question, he had to stop playing until it was determined if he really was eligible to play or not. Sounds reasonable until you realize that this was for USC only, while any other ACC school could allow their kids to keep playing unless it was later determined something was wrong. This stemmed from a situation that was created by certain ACC bigwigs which is mentioned in the next paragraph.
Right before Frank McGuire's death, some ACC officials met with him and told him that they had plotted to keep out of the league what was Frank's biggest recruit ever (Mike Grosso...some considered the second highest rated HS kid his senior year behind one Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul Jabbar). They came to ask for his forgiveness before he died. UNC and Duke, among many others, wanted this kid, too, but he snubbed them in favor of us. He enrolled at USC and was looking forward to being able to play the following year. Grosso and the other Freshman that came to Carolina with him, routed the varsity when they played.
His uncle ran and owned a small bar and he (the uncle) was the one and only employee. He paid for the tuition of his nephew and wrote it on a check that had the bar name on it instead of a check in his personal name. This was not a violation by rules of the NCAA. Turns out that Eddie Cameron, of Duke, who had hated McGuire, got ACC support to create a new rule to circumvent things and hurt McGuire, USC, and this innocent kid. Duke and many other ACC teams recruited Grosso, but were spurned by him. Grosso scored a 789 on his SAT. Back then, Freshmen could not play varsity sports, so he came to play on the Frosh basketball team. Nine months after his enrollment, the ACC created a new rule saying that any student with less than 800 on the SAT could never play in the ACC.
To further things, the ACC made an internal review of his recruitment. I read a version (which I cannot verify the source as being accurate...namely off one of the ACC school sites discussing the matter months ago) of this where ACC people barged in on the Grosso family in the middle of the night and gave them the third degree to pressure them in hopes of uncovering some viable evidence and deemed that since the check was written on a business account instead of a personal account, that a violation had been made, as if to somehow justify their new standards held against Grosso. While the ACC investigators did not find real proof (admission of guilt or paper trail of money being sent to the family, etc.), their investigators decided the family could not afford to pay his tuition. I guess that shows why Grosso's parents did not pay it and his uncle did, with money from his own business of which he had no employees.
He blew out his knee, transferred to Cincinnati and never had the career most thought he would, yet still had enough raw ability to become a member of their Hall of Fame and have a one year in the NBA. I read an article recently about him, written a couple of years ago, where he said he has had a difficult life with relationships and such and until the last few years remained haunted by what happened to him and he never forgave the ACC for doing what they did to him.
According to Bobby Cremins, everyone loved Mike and whenever Carolina played either Duke or UNC, Coach McGuire would say to the team, "Remember, these are the guys that got rid of Mike." Cremins said it fired everyone up and he felt like killing them. "To him, this was the incident that started the ACC hate against USC and it grew when Roche became a star.
UNC was found to have been allowing, for many years, two kids each season, that did not meet standards to enroll at that school and play football. Paul Dietzel, who had been trying to slightly lower the bar to compete with the SEC schools and other conferences for local kids, found out about it and asked the same thing be allowed at USC. His request was denied. When he protested about UNC doing it, they stopped, but were never penalized for their own violations of ACC law.
The funny thing was, USC was decades ahead of its time trying to convince the ACC that football was the real cash cow of the conference (and all of college sports), not basketball. We were sick and tired of losing our best in state players to the SEC because the requirements were significantly higher, set by the ACC, not the NCAA. We wanted to meet the lower standards so that our student-athletes could get into school more easily and improve the product brand of the ACC. We were denied this attempt and it came to be that every time we brought a subject up for a vote that we introduced in an attempt to help the ACC, it was voted down in unanimous fashion by the other schools, 0-7. This was the result of, no doubt, more collusion and secret arm-twisting by UNC and Duke. USC was the league doormat for ages in most sports, basketball being the king sport in the ACC, made that all the more pleasing to the Tobacco Roaders. When Frank built a team that started beating them, it inflamed their hatred of him and us and the state of South Carolina.
Some very few people say that leaving the ACC was the worst thing we ever did. If you were alive back then and old enough to have to remember those days, you would disagree, vehemently. Think of the rivalry and hatred most feel toward Clemson. Multiply that by four or five times and you would be close to the hatred the ACC had for us and we for them, basically all because we simply wanted equal treatment and for the ACC not to be ruled by, UNC and Duke.
The famous fight with Maryland? I was actually there, because as a kid, I was at every home game. Its cause was due to Maryland players throwing elbows all game long and Lefty did nothing to stop his kids doing it. With 5 minutes left in the game, we were winning by about 25 points, nearing 100 points, and a Maryland player took a cheap shot at Rick Adylett, hitting him in the head, as drove in for a lay up. Enough was enough, and our kids let them have it. Lefty got what he deserved for not pulling his cheap shot artists with the elbows.
After that point and the very unflattering Sports Illustrated issue on John Roche and the team, it was impossible to stay in the league. Each time our kids traveled, let alone fans, they were cursed with extreme profanity, hung Roche in effigy, had trash thrown at them, heated coins, gum tossed in their hair, threats were made and cruel taunts were made about Frankie, Jr., McGuire's boy, a young teenager who had a severe case of Cerebral Palsy, which left him with the capacity of about a two year old. Several times, Frank had to be restrained from going into the stands at away games (Clemson) because of those taunts.
When USC won the 1971 ACC basketball tournament, 52-51 on a last second shot, two or three seconds after the game concluded, someone pulled the plug on the broadcast, refusing to show the Gamecock fans or their team celebrating their biggest and best victory. That is the only time that has ever happened, so it was intentional. You can bet that if UNC won that game, every celebration, every award would have been broadcast, like it has been every other year and they probably would have interviewed the guy who had the job to lock the building up at night. Additionally, there were co-MVP's of the tournament. Only one award was available at the end of the game, of course. Instead of giving it to John Roche, the guy on the team that just won the tournament, they gave it to the other guy, on the team that lost, who played for UNC. I saw an article about Roche not too long ago and when asked about that, he mentioned he never received his award. He really didn't care since he doesn't display any of his memorabilia.
Even back then many, many Clemson fans pulled for USC in basketball because, they too, hated the ACC teams and they couldn't beat any of the powers. In fact, Clemson had agreed to pull out with USC to try to force the ACC to change. USC wanted to do a joint withdrawal, at the same press conference, but Clemson asked us to do it in the morning and they would follow in the afternoon. The story is that word got out to ACC people about what was about to happen and they met with Clemson and told them to stay in the ACC or they would be turned into the NCAA for another series of football recruiting violations. Stay and everything would be forgotten. They did not keep their word to us and we left the ACC, alone.
I vividly remember that day and the USC fans were joyous, such was the hatred of the ACC. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted from us. Freedom!!! We were tired of being the red-headed stepchild. To this day, I despise the ACC and am angry that we ever play any of them, in any sport, unless it is in a bowl game or NCAA's where we have no choice, and I even include Clemson in that group. If Clemson had followed through, I believe our rivalry would not be nearly as bitter as it is today.
Some forget (and this incident was before my time following the team) that Duke (again) got pissed at McGuire and USC and they actually were allowed by the ACC not to play us for a basketball season. If we had tried to request such a thing, you know darn well it would have been refused. Shortly before we decided to leave the ACC, Maryland and a few other ACC teams were making comments that they would refuse to play us again as long as McGuire was our coach.
Few recall that a few years after we left the ACC and before GT joined, we approached the ACC to rejoin as the SAT standards had been dropped to a level similar to what we had wanted (two months after we left the conference) and we also felt some of the raw emotions and bitterness may have subsided by then. The ACC agreed to let us back in if we did the following:
* Pay a fee to be readmitted (nothing wrong with that)
* Not be eligible to play for any ACC title for at least 3 years. (spite)
* We had to repay the ACC all the money they would have gotten from us for gates, TV appearances, etc., from the moment we left the conference, just as if we had never gone, even though they did nothing to earn that money. That probably would have added a couple million to pay out, at least. That was lots of money, back then. (greed)
* We had to offer a public apology to the ACC for ever leaving and admit we were wrong in doing so. (humiliation)
* Promise to never leave the ACC, again. (removal of our last right of protest)
All of that was in The State Newspaper or Columbia Record and I remember reading it as if it were yesterday. That was proof that the ACC would still treat us like garbage and we made the proper response by telling them to stick it in their collective ears.
The best day USC ever had in sports was the day we joined the SEC, regardless of the high level of completion, for they treated us as complete equals. That is all we ever wanted. From this we have great pride in our new conference and appreciation for anything positive that results within. The second best day was the day we left the ACC only because it eventually led us to the SEC.
Last edited by a moderator:
