Have bird, will travel: South Carolina’s Sir Big Spur embarks on longest football road trip

Back in 2013, a group of Japanese researchers stuck groups of four roosters in a dark room for weeks at a time. This was not some elaborate experiment toward a cure for cancer but, rather, a remedy for a long-standing bar argument.

Are roosters really capable of knowing when it’s morning? Do their screeching cock-a-doodle-dos ring out only when the sun comes out? Or do chickens possess some celestial power of being a living alarm clock?

After two weeks, the roosters were operating like clockwork. Without any sunlight, any view of the outside world, the roosters crowed basically at the same time every day for weeks. Eventually, the crowing stopped — a sign to the researchers that their circadian rhythm was out of whack after a prolonged time away from the sun.

The crowing, it seemed, could not be hacked by outside factors. It was on a 23.7-hour cycle no matter what.

Van and Beth Clark found that out the hard way. They are the caretakers of the most famous rooster in the region. And one morning at a hotel in Missouri in 2021, they had considered a tangible clock, but not Sir Big Spur’s internal clock.

Daylight saving time had pushed the clocks back an hour. And driving into Missouri had pushed it back another hour. Which meant the Clarks were snoozing in their hotel bed when Sir Big Spur decided to give them a 130-decibel, 3:30 a.m. wake-up call.

“I’m jumping out of bed, trying to throw something on,” Van said. “I open the door and the lady next door has already opened her door up. She was ballistic.”

These are the, um, interesting moments traveling with one of the most-photographed chickens in America. This week, as Sir Big Spur heads west to watch South Carolina take on Oklahoma, will be the bird’s longest trek yet for a football game.

Traveling with any bird, you could imagine, presents its share of challenges, requiring the foresight to ensure an entire Homewood Suites doesn’t wake because a rooster is doing its best fire alarm impression.

The Clarks prefer to stay with family or friends on away trips, but that’s not always possible. In Kentucky last month and for the Texas A&M game last year, though, they stayed at an Airbnb on a farm, and Sir Big Spur was able to crow all he wanted, only waking some horses.

Hotels, though, open the door for surprises. One time, they were headed down to the lobby in an elevator with a reflective ceiling. Sir Big Spur looked up. The need for dominance, bred over thousands of years, kicked in and he went berserk. He started crowing, trying to escape Beth’s arms so he could go rough up that rooster right in front of him.

“He tried to jump out and go fight,” Van said.

Ron Albertelli and Mary Snelling — the creators of South Carolina’s live-mascot program, first bringing Sir Big Spur to baseball games in 1999 with coach Ray Tanner’s blessing — began bringing the red black-breasted Old English rooster to football games in 2006.

Since then — since they handed the program to the Clarks in 2020; since a bizarre spat over the rooster’s appearance nearly required a name change; since the current Rooster In Chief, Sir Big Spur VII, was born three-and-a-half years ago South Carolina has never traveled to a location further than Norman, Oklahoma, though Texas A&M is just a few miles closer.

For years now, Sir Big Spur has traveled to every South Carolina football away game. Except Vanderbilt. The Commodores, for some reason, have a beef with live mascots. They are the only school in the SEC that forbids Sir Big Spur and Uga (Georgia) and Reveille (Texas A&M) and War Eagle (Auburn) and all the other awesome animals of the conference.

Setting off for Norman, Oklahoma

Just past 5 p.m. Wednesday, Van was loading up his black Ford F150 —specially wrapped with “Sir Big Spur” written on each side and decals that make it look like the man himself is staring out the window at you — operating by the first rule of trunk tetras: Biggest things in first.

Next came a small trash bag of wood chips. A cooler full of sandwiches for them and Sir Big Spur’s favorite treats: cut-up red grapes, shredded cheddar cheese and mozzarella cheese — in separate bags, of course. Sir Big Spur is not a peasant.

And then a game day bag that included everything from bungee cords to meal worms to an extra wheel to random tools, perhaps in case Sir Big Spur wanted to try carpentry.

Van and Beth are both retired teachers. Van, a music major at South Carolina, spent years teaching band at Strom Thurmond High, while Beth was an art teacher who, in retirement, has painted a museum’s worth of canvas gems, many of her beloved boy — the one with feathers and spurs.

“Having been band directors and teachers of teenagers,” Van said, “you work through the problems that would occur or would not occur.”

For all the detail, though, the road trip has no hard-and-fast timeline. They left their home in Edgefield at 8 a.m. Thursday with Sir Big Spur riding in the back, chilling in his crate. Every couple hours, they stopped, put a tether just over the rooster’s spur and walked him like a dog, letting him do his business next to some gas station.

They were cruising through Arkansas at 6 p.m. ET, eyeing Little Rock as the stopping point for the night. But they still hadn’t booked a hotel. When they were closer, Van said, they’d call the hotel and inquire about their pet policy. He’d then explain that this is not just an ordinary rooster, but a celebrity rooster, Sir Big Spur, and then ask for a first-floor room next to the side exit.

He recently had a similar call with some folks at Delta Airlines. He wanted to check if it was possible to fly Sir Big Spur to Oklahoma. The answer: Yes. Delta does fly celebrity animals, but there’s some logistics involved and Sir Big Spur, they told Van, would need to be in his carrier and in his own seat.

“They were nice about it,” Van said.

It would also bring into the equation a nightmare.

“I mean, a rooster can be super loud,” Van said, imagining Sir Big Spur crowing at 30,000 feet. “It’s pretty invasive for people. And if it’s the wrong time of day on a flight — you know? We’re pretty wary of that.”

Challenges of game days

For now, though, driving works. And the Clarks essentially operate as part of the band and spirit squad. They drive their decked-out Sir Big Spur truck inside the band/cheer police escort, zipping in and out of these small SEC towns for games. The police escort in Alabama lasted over 30 miles, Van said, and they were home from Tuscaloosa by 9:30 p.m.

The sideline, most of the time, is calm. People are nice. Sir Big Spur has a fan blowing on him and eats his little grapes. Occasionally, folks enjoy taunting a rooster. Van was on the sidelines with Sir Big Spur in 2019 when South Carolina beat Georgia. He heard everything.

“When we beat Georgia, we had five law-enforcement people with us,” Van said. “Just for the bird.”

At this point, they’ll do almost anything to make sure Sir Big Spur is on the sidelines — which, it should be noted, is not required.

The Clarks are in year two of a three-year operating deal with the university worth $25,000 annually in exchange for the family running the live-mascot program and bringing Sir Big Spur to South Carolina games, fundraisers, events, etc. They also get some supplementary income through South Carolina’s live-mascot fund.

But with travel expenses, materials to build four coops (Sir Big Spur has three sons living with the Clarks, any of which may take over for their dad as Sir Big Spur VIII) and all the food it takes to feed four roosters and dozens of hens, it’s clearly not a money-making endeavor.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” Van said.

Some folks retire and take up gardening or beekeeping or become a regular on Royal Caribbean voyages. Van and Beth have poured their lives into Sir Big Spur.

They speak about him in the same way parents talk about their kids on the football team. They talk not about the people they’ve met, but the people he’s met. People text them when their boy is on TV. When Hurricane Helene swept through Edgefield, all the hens and roosters stayed in their pens. Sir Big Spur, though, came inside.

They have gone all-in on the responsibility of taking care of this rooster, enough to drive over 30 hours to a football game so he can be where he’s needed.