40 years after ‘Fire Ants,’ USC has another electrifying defense …but no nickname

Clayton White assures everyone he’s fine. His players are fine. The South Carolina defense does not need a nickname. Actually, the Gamecocks’ defensive coordinator said, they don’t want one.

“I’m good,” he said.

Au contraire, Mr. White. This defense needs a nickname.

South Carolina’s defense attacks like hungry pit bulls who smell pork on the quarterback’s jersey. They do not call what they do “playing defense” or “rushing the passer” — or any other dictionary definition. They say they’re hunting.

Perhaps there’s a nickname in there somewhere?

If not with hunting, something with sacks. Something about this front seven. Something about No. 7 Kyle Kennard (12.5 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks), a clone of Bigfoot … if Bigfoot ran a 4.4.

Kennard might be an All-American this season. If not, at least he’s on pace to be the program’s single-season sack leader. (He’s just 4.5 sacks behind Jadeveon Clowney.) Heck, this 2024 team (28 sacks) is set to break the program record for sacks in a season (43, set in 2012).

White, the 46-year-old defensive coordinator who might be fielding some head coaching offers in a month, says he’s just fine with folks calling them, blandly, “Gamecock defense.” Perhaps whatever creativity White dials up with his linebacker blitz calls and designs to free Kennard and freshman Dylan Stewart dies in the nickname department.

Gamecock defense is fine at first. But it’s repetitive saying, South Carolina won because of the Gamecock defense. South Carolina was saved by the Gamecock defense. Where would South Carolina be without the Gamecock defense?

There’s something else that’s lost with the idea of a nickname, beyond our quest to think of a pun or metaphor so remarkable it catches on: We remember nicknames. We remember things associated with nicknames.

Do you remember that 1955 Ford Lincoln Futura from the superhero show? No. But you can picture the original Batmobile.

Here’s another example: Kids born in the 21st century who grow up playing baseball know who The Big Red Machine was — never mind it’s in reference to a baseball team from 50 years ago.

The nickname deems it important, signals to future generations that this thing/group/person was so good at what they did that it needed to be called something special.

Just ask Carl Hill.

Forty years ago, he was a 6-foot-3, 195-pound linebacker for South Carolina when he arrived back on campus after a road game and a fan handed him a T-shirt. On it were the words “Fire Ants.”

“That’s what they’re calling y’all now,” the fan told Hill.

How does 1984 stack up to 2024?

It’s been four decades and folks are still asking Hill about South Carolina’s 1984 defense. Whoops, sorry, people are still asking him about the Fire Ants, still telling him where they were when watching one of the most exciting defenses in school history.

The Gamecocks finished 10-2, famously reaching No. 2 in the nation during that “Black Magic” season of 1984. The Fire Ants held their first five opponents of the season — including Duke, Georgia and Pitt — under 300 total yards. Then they went out and beat Notre Dame, Florida State (the Fire Ants had a school-record seven interceptions vs. the Seminoles) and Clemson.

The thing about that Fire Ants defense: It was not the best statistical South Carolina defense. Not even close. Among all the South Carolina defenses, the 1984 Fire Ants weren’t among the top 10 in yards allowed, passing yards allowed, rushing yards allowed, points allowed and more. But they share the school record for picks in a season (23) and no Gamecock in 40 years has matched safety Bryant Gillard’s nine interceptions that year.

“When you’ve got a quarterback every game under pressure, you should get some picks,” Otis Morris said this week. Morris was one of the Fire Ants’ defensive backs who had two interceptions himself.

In that way, they are similar to this 2024 South Carolina defense — opportunistic. In all those mainstream stats (yards, points, etc), South Carolina is around the middle of the SEC, near the top in a few. But those are the peas and carrots of stats. Hearty … and oh so boring. The Gamecocks, like their nicknamed predecessors from four decades ago, thrive in the meaty stats. The fun stats.

Sacks? They’ve got ‘em — South Carolina ranks third in the nation (28).

Tackles for loss? Plenty — The Gamecocks are sixth in FBS (57).

Fumbles? Yeah, baby — South Carolina forces the second most of any team (2.6 per game)

Turnovers? Of course — The Gamecocks are 13th in America (16).

“They tackle extremely well. They are extremely aggressive,” said Hill, who still attends nearly every South Carolina home game and scrimmage. “This is the most similar team that I’ve seen to the Fire Ant defense since I left school.”

Origins of a nickname

When we talk about how nicknames are these vehicles of nostalgia that ensure we remember something … well, sometimes the specifics go out the window.

Like that the Fire Ants defense started in 1984.

By all accounts, it began a year earlier — the first season at South Carolina for head coach Joe Morrison and defensive coordinator Tom Gadd.

Back then Charles Bloom — now an associate athletic director at USC — was a junior at South Carolina working with the communications staff of the athletic department. One of his tasks was the matter of stat keeping, which, well, was a bit different back in the day.

Every Sunday morning, Bloom went into a meeting room with Gadd and a graduate assistant named Rondle Woods and they watched tape — actual rolls of film — of the previous night’s game. Bloom’s job was charting tackles — well, writing down what Gadd told him.

“He’d go, give 44 a solo. Give 32 an assist. Give this guy a quarterback hurry,” Bloom said this week. “I would chart it, accumulate the numbers, then go back to the office and type it up.”

One Sunday morning, Bloom said, they were watching tape and South Carolina, donning all-garnet uniforms, was doing exactly as Gadd had taught them: running to the ball no matter what.

Then, according to Bloom, Gadd said: “Hey, those guys look like a bunch of fire ants out there.”

“So I took it to my boss (former South Carolina sports information director Sid Wilson),” Bloom said, “and that’s how it got amplified.”

Now, there are different theories and timelines. Gadd himself said that it was actually defensive assistant Bill Michael who came up with the nickname while grading film after a 38-14 win over Southern California in October 1983. Michael saw the kids hustling in all garnet and made the Fire Ants reference with Wilson, the SID, in the room.

Both origin stories are plausible. But the first time the term seems to appear in a newspaper is over a month after that Southern Cal win, just a few days before the Gamecocks were playing their season finale against Clemson. In the Nov. 14, 1983 edition of the Columbia Record, beside a picture of South Carolina making a gang tackle, were the words “Swarmed by the ‘fire ants.’”

What makes them Fire Ants?

If you want to know what Gadd or Michael saw as they watched South Carolina and somehow thought about ants streaming toward a rotten banana on the ground, YouTube is amazing.

It takes about three seconds of scouring to find what is so rare these days: All 11 defenders in a single, close-up shot.

On a second-and-9 against Pitt during the 1984 season, the Panthers completed a short pass to the left side of the field for a few yards. A tackle was made right away. But there they came. Two red jerseys. Three. Seven, eight. After a second, all 11 South Carolina defenders were huddled around the receiver like he was getting ready to hand out $100 bills.

It looks bizarre. Thank goodness Gadd, the defensive coordinator, did not give a lick about bizarre.

“We used to say something was wrong with him,” Gillard told The State this week. “You would think this guy was someone who enjoyed pain.”

Gadd’s biggest coaching emphasis was running to the play. Get around the ball. Back in those days, the all-22 practice footage would cut off right when the play was over and ...

“If you’re not in that film (when it ends),” Gadd told them, according to Hill, “you get to stay out at practice because you need to learn how to run more.”

Gadd, who died in 2003, made the Fire Ants by training a cross country team. He had one drill called “Escape from Saigon” where the defense lined up in formation while Gadd stood somewhere far away on the field and blew his whistle. They’d have to bust their tails to him, then dart back and get back in position.

On Mondays, when the offensive guys were in the facility watching film, Gadd’s defense was on the practice field, running up and down for 30 to 45 minutes. “Pure sprinting,” Gillard said.

“If they switched me to defense,” offensive guard Del Wilkes told Sports Illustrated in 1984, “I’d think about suicide.”

Gadd did not need to create a great defense with superior talent when superior effort worked just fine.

And it is those guys, the ones who escaped from Saigon and still talk about Gadd with a tinge of fear, who absolutely love watching this 2024 defense.

“They play team defense and everyone is hustling to the ball, which breed big plays,” Morris said of the 2024 squad.

They don’t quite hustle in the same conspicuous way as the Fire Ants of 1984, but they are constantly putting bodies around the football. Just in case someone misses a tackle. Just in case the ball drops to the ground. Just in case something crazy happens.

The NCAA limits how much time White can spend with his defense, which doesn’t make a half-hour of running that advantageous. Still, every day he is trying to instill in his group the same principles Gadd hardwired into the Fire Ants.

“It’s our livelihood,” White said of running to the ball. “You have to fly with an unbelievable intent and effort … because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Forty years have passed since that defense and that team reset the reality of what was possible at South Carolina. Now in 2024, as NIL and the transfer portal turn 1984 into a bygone time, this Gamecocks defense — still without a nickname — is so fun, so enthusiastic, so intense that we’re able to remember the past.