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"Where's Steve?" my Dad was asking. "I see Bobby Bowden, and there's Bear Bryant. I've got to believe Spurrier's up there somewhere."

My Pop and I were at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta this past weekend. We share birthdays three days apart (NEWS FLASH: Dad's older than me!), and the best way we could think of to celebrate the occasion was to go look at some exhibits honoring the best college football players and coaches of the last 140 or so years.

"He's right there," I told Dad as we studied a painted mural of the game's best all-time coaches. "Look at the bottom, in the center."

"I don't see him," he said finally, starting to walk away.

"The guy in the orange visor," I said. "With the Florida players."

There was a pause. My Dad squinted. Then there was a flash of recognition. "Ohhhhhhh," he said. "Yeah. There he is. I guess I'm just not used to seeing him in Florida colors."

Neither am I.

Spurrier's getting ready to kick off his 11th season as head coach of the Gamecocks, which is just one season fewer than he was the Gators' ball coach. If he finds a way to get through this season and the next, he'll have been our coach as long as he was Florida's.

But at the Hall of Fame, he's a Gator and always will be.

So it is.

You're not going to believe this, but the College Football Hall of Fame doesn't have a ton of exhibits to look at if you're a Gamecock fan. There's the obvious enshrinement of George Rogers. And Sterling Sharpe. And

that's about it, unless you count Lou Holtz being grouped in with the two Gamecock Hall of Famers, even though he's pictured in a Notre Dame sweatshirt.

We don't exactly dominate the place.

But you know what's weird?

We do dominate the gift shop. And that means something. I'll explain.

As we were walking up to the ticket line, a very friendly employee wearing a Georgia Tech necklace greeted us. "Where you boys from?" he said.

When we told him we were from South Carolina, he sighed, then nodded. "You're Gamecocks, aren't you?" he asked. (Please note that he never once assumed we were Clemson fans).

When we told him we were, he looked towards the heavens for a minute, then back at us. "We get a bunch of Gamecocks here," he said unenthusiastically. "They're always around here."

And at that exact moment (I promise this is true), the guy immediately in front of us in line turned around and said, "Y'all Gamecocks? So are we!"

It turned out he and his girlfriend were from the Lexington area and had made the trip to the big city to see the Braves and the Hall of Fame.

"We came to see Spurrier," my Dad gushed.

"You're gonna see him with Florida stuff on," the girl told us.

And that's exactly what happened. There was no mention of Spurrier even having a cup of coffee in Columbia. As far as the Hall of Fame is concerned, Spurrier was a winner as a Gator player and a Gator coach, and then his career mysteriously ended around 13 years ago.

Let's face it: We haven't exactly filled up the record books over the last 125 years. South Carolina football is a long, exhausting, depressing saga occasionally studded with sparks of hope.

That's who we are.

And it's OK to admit it.

Why? Because we never give up, and we never stop caring. My trip to the Hall of Fame proved it.

As soon as Dad and I walked in, an attendant asked us to scan our badge on a touchscreen and type in our favorite team. In front of us was a massive wall of helmets from every Division 1 club in the nation. It was almost bewildering to behold. I could barely make sense of the blob of insignias and colors.

"You're South Carolina guys?" the attendant said. "Oh yeah, your helmet is right here," he said, pointing directly at the Gamecock helmet amidst the mass. "We see a lot of y'all here."

As we walked in, the USC helmet lit up, welcoming us to the Hall.

And that kicked off an extremely enjoyable two hours. We may not overwhelm the exhibits, but the folks who run the place have made sure you'll enjoy it, whether you pull for Ohio State or South Dakota State.

Your badge ignites interactive screens throughout the Hall, so if you walk by a large display of, say, college stadiums, it will suddenly flash videos of Gamecock cheerleaders and USC highlights. At one point, a Chick-fil-A Cow emerged to personally greet my Dad and to express a love of the Gamecocks.

The low point came when Dad and I passed by a Karaoke machine that played college fight songs. "We have to do this, and yet I don't want us to do this," I said to him.

"I'm going in," he said, flashing his badge against the screen. Within seconds, we were singing the Carolina fight song, and unfortunately being videoed doing so on a large widescreen TV. That video may still exist somewhere in the world, although we both want you to believe it has been destroyed.

"What a couple of nerds," Dad said as we watched the carnage unfold on the widescreen in front of hundreds of other visitors.

There was more fun to follow. I tried and failed to kick an extra point. There were quotes from great coaches. There was an exhibit chronicling the progression of tailgating from the '20s to today. There were ancient jerseys, helmets and shoulder pads. There were highlights of the greatest plays of all time. There was a feature where coaches explained exactly what happens during the 25 seconds while a play is being called, which was genuinely humbling for a fan and reiterated how little we really know about the game. There was even a display of the Heisman and the national championship trophy.

All in all, it was one of the greatest Sundays I've ever spent.

But the greatest part came when I strolled through the gift shop.

That gave me flashbacks of being back in the Palmetto State.

It was filled with Gamecock memorabilia, from the front to the back. There were shelves of books about tips on being a Gamecock fan and coffee table tomes about South Carolina football. There were racks of Gamecock T-shirts and caps and shot glasses and pennants and footballs, and even USC baby onesies.

"You can buy a panoramic picture of Williams-Brice for 200 bucks," my Dad sagely noted. "Or you could just go to a game and take a picture."

"Look at that," I said to him, pointing to a wall that was almost entirely overwhelmed with USC stuff. There was a signed Jadeveon Clowney jersey with accompanying pictures, and a signed Alshon Jeffery jersey.

"There's no sign of Clemson in here," he said.

And there wasn't.

There were the typical Alabama jerseys, and some Ohio State stuff, and some Michigan stuff, and some Florida stuff and Auburn stuff, and a lot of stuff. And let there be no doubt - there was pleeeeeenty of Georgia Bulldog memorabilia. But honest to God, if you just walked in there without a rooting interest and said to yourself, "Who's the most represented team in this place?"

That team is South Carolina.

For whatever reason, we sell tickets and we sell merchandise.

I don't get it, and you probably don't either.

But people care about this team.

And as odd as it may sound, that stroll through the gift shop made me proud to be a South Carolina fan. We didn't have many exhibits in the actual Hall of Fame, but by God, we owned the gift shop.

What does that mean?

It means we care.

No matter what you read about practice, or how discouraged you get during the games that are coming, or how depressing last season might have been, remember this.

We care.

We care more than just about anyone else does.

These are our guys. No matter what, these are our guys.

We care.

And we always will.

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