One is that then-Gamecocks athletic director and football coach Paul Dietzel believed the conference's difficult academic entrance requirements negated any chance for his program to achieve success on a national level.

A second is that then-Gamecocks basketball coach Frank McGuire had worn out his welcome and convinced the school's administration to leave the league high and dry after having whipped North Carolina in a memorable 1971 conference tournament championship game in Greensboro.

At the time it happened, I thought (still do) that football issues drove the decision.

But all of these years later, the seed is not as important as the fruit, which would have been more tasty had South Carolina stayed aboard. The school would have been better off with the ACC, and the ACC would have been better, and stronger, with South Carolina as a member.

If it makes the ACC old-liners feel happier, there isn't much doubt the league has fared better than South Carolina.

The ACC's acquisitions of Georgia Tech in 1979 and Florida State in 1991 resulted in three national football titles and two NCAA Final Four appearances. Those additions would have been made with or without South Carolina. By the time FSU entered, a nine- or 10-team league model had replaced eight teams as the best workable football formula.

The Gamecocks, since joining the SEC in 1992, have had three winning seasons in league football competition (all 5-3) and have slipped in basketball to the extent that a strong NIT performance has more or less become the ceiling.

What hasn't changed is the feel of the fit. South Carolina was a natural for the ACC, as were the Gamecocks' rivalries with most of the ACC schools. It's still difficult to accept the fact that the Clemson-South Carolina football annual finale has no impact on either team's conference status.

When N.C. State and South Carolina open the 2008 football season on Thursday night in Columbia, S.C., the players won't sense the historic connection. For that matter, neither will the coaches -- South Carolina's Steve Spurrier and N.C. State's Tom O'Brien.

Those players and coaches landed at their schools long after State began the Dick Christy Award, which annually went to the most outstanding Wolfpack player in the game against the Gamecocks. Christy, on Nov. 23, 1957, scored all of State's points in a 29-26 win over South Carolina that resulted in the Pack's first-ever ACC football championship. Most fans will not remember that game and those days, either. But State's coach at that time, the late Earle Edwards, called Christy's performance "so amazing" that Wolfpack fans should never forget it.

The nature of history is that we do forget. It falls into the category of South Carolina's years of ACC membership. It's gone, and it probably can't be fixed. But in the perfect world of what once was referred to as "the ACC family," Thursday's opener would be a conference game.

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