Every time Jay Guillermo sees South Carolina’s block C logo with the Gamecock in the middle, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“It has been ingrained in your mind that you don’t like that,” Clemson’s starting center said on Monday. “I have some people in my family that are Gamecock fans, and it is something that you look at, ‘Man! I don’t like that.’
“It’s like … I really cannot describe it. It’s like man, and I know it just doesn’t go back to the logo, but I just cannot stand that logo.”
But it is South Carolina’s logo, or at least that hate for it in Guillermo’s case, that makes the Clemson-South Carolina game one of the more intense rivalries in college football. This Saturday the two rivals will meet up for the 113th time on the gridiron when No. 1 Clemson visits Williams-Brice Stadium for a noon kick.
“The garnet and black is not any good. It is the dark side and the orange and purple is very good,” Guillermo said. “It puts a little taste in your mouth and it kind of gives you a little extra incentive to go win the football game.”
Guillermo knows the Clemson-Carolina game all too well. Though he is from Maryville, Tenn., he grew up in a Clemson family. His first memory of the big game came in 2002—the 100th Anniversary—when he was eight years old and staying at his grandparents’ house.
“They had this big TV, this entertainment system that is pretty old now, but I remember sitting there watching and thinking, ‘Man, that would be so awesome to be a part of,’” Guillermo said.
He also remembers going outside with his little cousin and pretending to play in the game.
“I always made him be South Carolina,” Guillermo said. “I just remember thinking that would be so awesome to be a part of that so now it is pretty special.
“But I had to do it. I could never be a Gamecock. I had to make him do it.”
Jason Davis, who Guillermo thinks more as a little brother, was the cousin Guillermo forced to be the Gamecocks in their backyard games. And let’s just say sometimes he did not play too nice.
“I went ahead and beat up on him. I had it instill in me from the time I was a little kid that we did not like South Carolina so I went ahead and beat up on him a little bit,” said the Tigers’ 6-foot-3, 320-pound center.
Guillermo said he wore a James Davis’ jersey back in the day and dreamed about what it would be like to actually play in the Clemson-Carolina game.
“It was purple and it was when we still had the tubing around it, I wore that thing everywhere,” he said. “I went through a phase from like the second or third grade through the seventh that I probably wore a jersey every day. I was that kid.
“But that always was my favorite jersey, my Clemson jersey.”
These days Guillermo has switched out his James Davis jersey for a much bigger jersey with the No. 57 on it. He doesn’t wear it to just wear it anymore, he wears it on Saturdays in the fall, and this coming Saturday he will put it on and will be the starting center for his favorite team in the one game he always wanted to play in.
“It will be a little surreal,” Guillermo said. “Getting to go out there first is something that is pretty special, but it is something I have always worked toward and have always aspired to be a part of. I’m really, really happy that I have a chance to do that.”
And he is happy he doesn’t have to make his cousin pretend like he is South Carolina anymore. Now he gets to go out there and beat up on the real Gamecocks.