Steve Spurrier was being honored at the South Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame, but he still found time to take one more shot at Dabo Swinney. At Monday night’s ceremony in Columbia, the old rivals once again shared the spotlight, with Spurrier turning his big night into another quiet roast of Clemson’s head coach.

Steve Spurrier started by reminiscing about his arrival at South Carolina back in 2005, recalling how he told a Gamecock Club gathering in Sumter that his personal goal was to become the winningest coach in school history. At the time, people didn’t buy it as SC wasn’t a powerhouse. His goal was to win 65 games. Turns out, he blew past that mark as he finished with 86 wins. But he specifically thanked Dabo Swinney for one particular night when he earned his record-breaking 65th win.

“I’d like to thank Coach Dabo,” he said in his acceptance speech. “His team didn’t play very well that night, and I was able to win at Clemson. Dylan Thompson had a heck of a game that night, but Dabo has got more conference championships than any coach in America right now, two national championships. So I think he’s done pretty good. And I’m still trying to figure out how we beat you guys five years in a row. But it happened, I guess.”

Clemson fans probably still wonder the same thing. Before Steve Spurrier arrived, South Carolina had only made occasional bowl appearances. But his presence changed everything. And nowhere was that shift more obvious than against Clemson, because for years, the Tigers owned the rivalry historically. 

Steve Spurrier didn’t win against Dabo Swinney immediately. South Carolina lost three of its first four meetings against Clemson. But then, the Gamecocks put down five straight wins from 2009 through 2013 by double digits every single time during that streak. 

That still stings because it happened before Dabo Swinney built his national title empire. Clemson eventually became a modern powerhouse, won national championships in 2016 and 2018, and became the ACC powerhouse. Yet in the middle of that rise is this chapter, which Steve Spurrier isn’t allowing to fade. 

What made the Spurrier-Swinney feud so entertaining was creativity. The funniest part is that their beef started because of a misunderstanding in 2011. After South Carolina beat Clemson 34-13, Gamecocks announcer Todd Ellis famously declared, “We aren’t LSU, and we aren’t Alabama. But we sure ain’t Clemson.”

South Carolina’s official X account posted the quote and accidentally made it look like Steve Spurrier said it himself. Dabo Swinney responded with one of the most memorable rivalry rants.

“They’re not Clemson. They’re never going to be Clemson,” he fired back. “No, three-game winning streak is going to change that… There’s a lot of rivalries out there. This is more of a domination. That’s a fact. My kids’ grandkids won’t live long enough to see this ever really become a rivalry.”

That aged terribly because Steve Spurrier immediately kept winning. And naturally, he kept trolling. Before South Carolina traveled to LSU in 2012, he pretended to confuse Clemson’s “Death Valley” with LSU’s stadium.

“Most of our guys have never been to Death Valley,” he told the Charleston Post and Courier. “(LSU’s stadium) is the Death Valley, isn’t it? Or is there another one? There’s two of them. That’s right. There’s two Death Valleys.”

Swinney answered immediately, saying, “I can see where he might have a little confusion. Our guys have never been to USC. California is a long way from here. I can see where there would be a little confusion, got two Death Valleys, two USCs, but only one real one.”

Instead of sounding like head coaches, these two sounded like two veteran comedians trying to top each other’s punchlines. The funniest part about all this is that Steve Spurrier still sounds like he’s coaching rivalry week.

Even retirement didn’t end the Steve Spurrier-Dabo Swinney beef

Despite retiring from college football in 2015 after the South Carolina run, Steve Spurrier didn’t let it rest. Back in February, he took another shot at Dabo Swinney over Clemson’s complaints about transfer portal tampering and NCAA enforcement.

“I thought by now somebody would’ve told Dabo there ain’t no rules anymore,” he said over a Zoom call. “There’s no rules. We talk about it all the time now. They’re still on the books, I guess back there [at Clemson], about ‘you can’t do this after this date or that date… I think Dabo has learned now that he’s got to start paying his players just like everybody else is, or you’ll get left behind. You can complain, but I don’t know how much good it’s going to do.”

And that’s why these exchanges still hit years later. Because underneath the sarcasm and storytelling sits real football history. Steve Spurrier helped elevate South Carolina to heights the program had never consistently reached. Dabo Swinney eventually built Clemson into a national dynasty. Both won big and changed the rivalry forever. The head ball coach may be retired, but the scoreboard in his head never resets.