10,000 "Cocky Cloths" are deployed to the student population in the North Stands during the Gamecock matchup with LSU. "Man, we loved it," said USC receiver Moe Brown. "When you see the towels waving it added extra umph to our stadium." It was reported that almost every big name recruit attending the game ended up signing. The student body was simply quoted as saying, "OMG! That was off da Swirl !!"

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If they gave out a Most Valuable Tchotchke award, it would have to go to the Pittsburgh Steelers' Terrible Towel.

At any Pittsburgh Steelers game, if you don't have a Terrible Towel, you will be in the minority. -- "If you ain't got a towel, you ain't got nothing," Steelers vendors yell to fans.

Legendary Steelers radio announcer Myron Cope, who died a year ago this month, came up with the idea in 1975.

"He wanted something that would be easy to carry," his daughter Elizabeth Cope said. "If it hit somebody, you know, there'd be no law suits. No one would get hurt."

The towel started as a block of gold terry cloth with black lettering used to intimidate the opposition.

"The team comes and peers in the tunnel for the introductions," Myron Cope said in his spirited voice in a 2007 interview. "From nowhere come, like, 30,000 towels. Yellow, black, gold towels.

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The white towels being waved in the student section Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium were hardly signs of surrender.

Described as “white rags” by South Carolina play-by-play announcer Todd Ellis during the USC-LSU broadcast, the towels were the brainchild of a pair of brothers from Barnwell looking to add some energy to the game-day atmosphere for the Gamecocks’ stretch run.

John and Chris Wilder gave away about 10,000 “Cocky cloths” to students at the LSU game and have a contract to hand out more before next month’s Tennessee and Arkansas games.

John Wilder, 34, a car salesman from Greenville, spent nearly $26,000 on the first batch of 30,000 towels, which are about the size of a hand towel and feature the words, “Cocky Cloth, A Carolina Original!” printed in garnet lettering.

Wilder, a lifelong Gamecock fan from Barnwell, paid for the souvenir towels by withdrawing $8,500 from a home equity line of credit, $2,500 from his checking account and putting the remaining $14,960 on a credit card.

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