Bill Barnhill can still hear the band.

The senior offensive tackle was standing inside Notre Dame Stadium's singular, cramped tunnel waiting to take the field with the rest of his South Carolina teammates on Oct. 20, 1984. An undefeated but relatively unknown group of Gamecocks were about to play in one of college football's iconic venues, against one of college football's most legendary programs.

And for Barnhill, one of college football's most memorable fight songs.

"It's not Notre Dame that comes out into the tunnel with you; it was the band," Barnhill recalled in an interview with GamecockScoop. "So the band shows up in the tunnel with you, and what does the band do? They play that fight song that you've heard your entire life as loud as they possibly can, in a tunnel, with you standing right there. That really kind of puts it in your head like, 'Okay, we're at Notre Dame; we're actually here. I've got a trumpet in my ear right now that's letting me know I'm at Notre Dame right now.'"

Even for a confident South Carolina team ranked No. 11 in the national polls coming into play, Barnhill had no way to predict what was coming next.

Not the 68-point thriller the teams were about to play, not the maddening eight combined turnovers the teams were about to commit and certainly not what the legacy of this afternoon would be for South Carolina fans everywhere nearly four decades later.

South Carolina entered its second season under head coach Joe Morrison unranked with little national buzz. Why would there be? The Gamecocks went 5-6 in 1983, their third consecutive season missing a bowl game. But quietly, Morrison was building something.

They took care of The Citadel and Duke early before pulling off a 17-10 upset win over No. 12 Georgia, then a pair of 45+ point outbursts against Kansas State and Pitt ran the record to 5-0. But all five wins had been at home, four against unranked opponents. Were they really this good? Was it sustainable? Game six — the first road test — would be the key.

And of all places to venture for your first road game of the season, Notre Dame.

"I remember going into our Sunday defensive meetings and our defensive coordinator Tom Gadd had a bunch of names on the board," linebacker Carl Hill told GamecockScoop. "There were probably about 30 names. He said, "Gentlemen, you see these names on the board? Blue-chipper, blue-chipper, blue-chipper, they had 20 some-odd names just on the offense alone that were considered blue-chippers. It was kind of eye-opening."

Although their 3-3 record did not show it, this was still a Notre Dame team loaded with elite talent. Quarterback Steve Beuerlein played 17 years in the NFL. His freshman wide receiver Tim Brown won a Heisman Trophy four years later. Tight end Mark Bavaro became a two-time Super Bowl champion with the New York Giants. Running back Allen Pinkett was a two-time All-American. Up and down the roster, Notre Dame posed challenges.

And then there was the challenge of getting past Notre Dame, the name. The campus. Those ubiquitous gold helmets. The program South Carolina's players grew up watching dominate college football throughout the 1970s. Lingering "ghosts of Knute Rockne" haunted the stadium as Barnhill remembered thinking leading into the week.

Approaching Notre Dame was last. Getting past everything else around the trip was first, right down to the band blasting out those iconic notes just minutes before kickoff.

"I think we were all a little starstruck," quarterback Mike Hold told GamecockScoop. "It's not like today where every game is on television. We're walking into a place where we all grew up watching. Going out on the field on Friday and going through walkthrough and seeing Touchdown Jesus, it's hard to explain the feeling that we all had being in that stadium. It was someplace to me that really was like mythical."

On a blustery afternoon with rain falling and temperatures topping out in the low 50s, conditions were far from optimal for the offenses. Notre Dame muffed a punt early in the first quarter, which South Carolina turned into the game's first points on an Allen Mitchell quarterback sneak.

Pinkett tied the game six minutes later, and frustration mounted for South Carolina. Outside of the touchdown drive, the Gamecocks did not pick up a first down on any of their other first four possessions. Hold threw an interception, and Notre Dame cashed in for a go-ahead touchdown pass from Beuerlein to Bavaro.

Notre Dame led 17-14 at halftime, but it should have been much worse. The Fighting Irish held a 293-144 advantage in total yards and left points on the table after a fumble on the 2-yard-line and future NFL kicker John Carney's first missed field goal of 1984.

"I remember the field was super slippery," wide receiver Bill Bradshaw told GamecockScoop. "They had watered the field prior to the game and let the grass grow because we had that high-powered veer offense, and we were hard to stop. They were trying to slow us down."

If the first half was sloppy, it was minuscule compared to the third quarter. South Carolina turned the ball over three times on seven plays leading to nine Notre Dame points. Mitchell and Hold continued to rotate at quarterback, but both struggled.

With 15 minutes left, Notre Dame led 26-14. South Carolina had twice as many turnovers as scoring drives, and it was easy to think the hot 5-0 start was about to fade away in a harsh road environment.

"We gave them so many points," Hill said. "They weren't beating us; we were giving them points. The defense kind of just kept playing and kept playing. Mike Hold came in late in that third quarter I think, and the offense started getting momentum. We started running the ball, and the defense was making some stops. Once we got a touchdown down, that's when we kind of on the sideline started feeling like we could win this thing."

After a touchdown and a two-point conversion closed the gap to four points and a Paul Vogel interception gave the Gamecocks possession back, they were facing third-and-8 from the Notre Dame 34 with just over nine minutes to go.

The pocket broke down. Hold did not.

He scrambled 34 yards to put the Gamecocks on top and complete the 12-point comeback, a mad dash to the end zone still remembered as one of the greatest plays in program history.

"When Mike scrambled and ran the long touchdown, I realized that we were coming back and we were going to win that game," Bradshaw said. "They kept turning the ball over late, which was a huge help and a boost to our confidence. It was easy to do that because it was slippery and wet. It was kind of an eerie, gloomy kind of field."

Notre Dame's third turnover of the second half just two plays later led to another South Carolina touchdown, and that one held up as the difference after Earl Johnson made one final game-saving play by intercepting a last-ditch Beuerlein pass.

Final: South Carolina 36, Notre Dame 32.

For the first time, the Gamecocks were 6-0.

"I remember getting home, and I've never seen more people," Bradshaw said. "It must've been one in the morning, but there were, I don't know how many thousands of people at the airport. I couldn't get over that there were that many people that excited about that season. It was a magical season."

Accounts of the scene at Columbia Metropolitan Airport vary. The New York Times says 8,000 South Carolina fans flocked to meet the team plane home. A Sports Illustrated story from a week later has the number at 10,000.

Hold doesn't remember the exact number, but recalled freshman receiver Danny Smith "riding on top of the team bus back to campus." For Hill, it was the reception he received back at his dorm.

"It was almost like there were people lining the roads all the way back to campus," Barnhill said. "People were coming back to the airport and the side of the streets. It was really neat. It was one of those reasons why you play the game."

Everyone affiliated with South Carolina has a memory, a moment, a person they were with, something concrete from that day almost four decades ago.

Even in a season that included the best start in school history, one of only four all-time double-digit win seasons and wins over rivals Clemson and Georgia, the trip to South Bend still stands out. The soggy conditions, the aura and of course, the thrilling comeback are still vivid memories for these players as South Carolina prepares to take on Notre Dame for the first time since.

"I remember somebody asked me after that season what the biggest win was," Hold remembered.

"I said Notre Dame, by far."