When South Carolina plays football at Williams-Brice Stadium, the distance between Charlotte and Columbia usually is the longest 90 miles in the Southeast. We left downtown – never uptown – Charlotte for Columbia At 3 p.m. and worried we left too late. At 4:32, we pulled off the freeway onto Bluff Road. We could see the stadium. We couldn’t believe it! We knew, however, that the last mile was going to take at least two hours because this was Columbia.
Yet we cruised right in. We never had to wait for more than three minutes. We found our parking place right away. We walked past George Rogers, the South Carolina running back who won the Heisman Trophy in 1980.
He was selling autographs from the back of his black Lincoln Navigator. The back gate was down. For a $5 donation to the George Rogers Foundation, you could pose with the Heisman Trophy. The SUV was parked very close to George Rogers Boulevard.
There are three possibilities for the ease with which we drove in:
A. Traffic control has come to Columbia.
B. Fans are so excited about the beginning of football season that the traffic jams came three hours earlier.
C. Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier fixed the traffic.
wow someone form Charlotte complaining about another cities traffic?
Posted by: cpnthrfan | August 30, 2008 at 12:35 AM
no..but he did show how far much better SEC football is than the A She She....
Posted by: JB | August 30, 2008 at 10:15 AM
RE: Your article on the D1A college football game in Bank Of America Stadium on Satuday Aug. 30th 2008 between ECU and VT and the potential future UNCC football concept.
Its UNCC 49ers NOT Charlotte 49ers. This has been confused with SF 49ers namesake or Highway 49 for decades. There are 50k alumni who hated AD Rose doing this and we know the city wants to grab attention and thank God UNCC was built on the old dairy farm spread in rural north Meck opening in 1965 moving from old Central High School that became CPCC off E Trade downtown.
The school was nicknamed 49ers because of Highway 49 and a connection to the 1849 California gold rush that ironically technically ended the original American historical local gold rush and local mint. Also there is the fact that in 1949 Charlotte College was created out of the 1946 part time night college for returning GIs from WW2 that ties into this also.
The school being moved far out into north Mecklenburg and Newell township only a few miles from former Mecklenburg owned land of the newly broken off Cabarrus Cty where gold was first discovered in America in 1799 that created the nations biggest mint with the Charlotte Mint until 1849. This was tied in together with the goldminer gold rush 49er name since this new county was technically still part of Mecklenburg in many minds after a group of farmers went to Raleigh in 1792 and broke off a big chunk of land being tired of riding all day by horse and buggy to the townseat of Charlottetown. Allegedly the farmers paid an eastern NC newly elected immigrant French politician named Cabarrus under the table with farm animals houses chickens cows and many bushels of farm products such as corn beans tomatos etc to break the tie vote and allow them to steal 50% of Mecklenburg and name it for this shady Frenchman who allegedly was later arrested as a horse thief and was hanged by vigilante justice. We do know he caused the theft of the huge chunk of Mecklenburg land where gold was very ironically innocently found only a few yrs later by these same whiny caniving German farmers who may have rigged the whole thing to get the gold and become millionaires as many believe.
We therefore propose The CO most notorious infamous sports writer "professor" Thomas Sorenson present a long held belief that to the Observer that UNCC be renamed the 99ers and ditch the 49er name. Formally UNCC needs to be renamed properly as UNCC 99ers to honor the original gold rush in America since right here in Mecklenburg County.
Lets make it UNCC 99ers. Lets honor the original American discovery of gold in Mecklenburg County. We know these northeastern farmers made of this innocent tale of some young kid finding the gold chunk in 1799 when in fact they knew there were 100s of billions in pure gold and rigged the breakoff theft of the new county using the eastern ex-Frenchman horse thief to do it.
signed: The University Of North Carolina at Charlotte Mecklenburg Alumni
Posted by: UNCC Alumni Group | August 31, 2008 at 09:35 AM