Alabama’s history with South Carolina is short, but one of the Crimson Tide’s losses to the Gamecocks stands out above the rest for all the wrong reasons.
The two programs had met only 18 times when that game rolled around. Alabama won the first four meetings, played between 1937 and 1946, then swept three more in the 1960s.
The Tide’s first loss in the series came on the road in 2001, a 37-36 defeat. Since then, Alabama has gone 5-2 against South Carolina, leaving the Crimson Tide with a 15-3 edge overall.
Still, if you ask Alabama fans which loss hurt the most, the answer is usually the 2010 meeting in Columbia. A year earlier in Tuscaloosa, Alabama had hammered South Carolina behind Mark Ingram, who ran for 246 yards while working heavily in the Tide’s wildcat offense. Greg McElroy threw two interceptions, Nick Saban shelved the passing game, and South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia was nearly as ineffective as GMac.
But the 2010 trip to South Carolina flipped everything. The defending national champions were expected to handle business, yet Garcia turned in the game of his life.
He went 17-for-20 for 201 yards and three touchdowns, while Alabama’s ground game was held to just 36 yards. South Carolina shocked the college football world with a 35-21 win and wrecked Alabama’s hopes for back-to-back championships.
There was another Alabama loss to South Carolina that was even uglier.
That one came in 2004, during Mike Shula’s second season after the Mike Price debacle. Shula had gone 4-9 in his debut in 2003, which stood as the second-most losses ever for Alabama; only Ears Whitworth’s 1955 team was worse at 0-10. The Tide opened 2004 with wins over Utah State, Ole Miss, and Western Carolina before falling at Arkansas and then returning home to face Lou Holtz’s Gamecocks.
South Carolina arrived in Tuscaloosa at 3-1 after losing to No. 3 Georgia, 20-16.
Alabama had already lost Brodie Croyle to injury, so Marc Guillon was at quarterback. The first half was quiet, and South Carolina led 6-3.
Then the Gamecocks pushed ahead with two third-quarter touchdowns, and Alabama went 40 minutes without scoring after its second-quarter field goal.
The loss was ugly, but it was also self-inflicted. Guillon and his replacement, Spencer Pennington, each threw two interceptions, and Alabama kept handing South Carolina chances it didn’t need to create. Lou Holtz’s team was the more physical group, but the numbers were brutal: South Carolina starting quarterback Dondrail Pinkins posted a 47.3 QBR, Guillon finished at 6.0, and the Gamecocks passed for only 46 yards while beating Alabama by three scores.
For Tide fans, it was the kind of defeat that brought a real sense of doom, not just the imagined kind. And it got worse the next week, when Mike Shula decided to start Guillon again.
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