[Tuck4Bama]

Never again doubt the power of football.

Not after Saturday night.

Not after South Carolina and South Carolina State squared off at Williams-Brice Stadium.

A 60-minute game contested on a plot of grass that measures 100 yards by 53Ð yards scraped away years of unwanted history and helped the state take another positive step into the future.

Combine the expectations in the week leading to the game with the blocking and tackling on a late-summer Saturday night, and the sum of good feeling accomplished more than all the rhetoric through the years.

"Historic" and "symbolic" often found their way into media reports centering on the first football game between the "big" state university, South Carolina, and the historical black college-university, South Carolina State. The words fit.

Stories focused on the monetary gain of S.C. State, and certainly the Bulldogs' athletic treasury benefits from the transfusion of cash. Fans who believed the racial divide would never permit the game basked in the attention and reveled in anticipation.

All those factors matter, of course. Bundle them into one package and discover the real reason to celebrate a football game that figured to be one-sided on the scoreboard: the visibility and credibility showered on S.C. State.

Those two elements could not be bought at any price, and that is the power and passion of football.

GoGamecocks.com | Football proves its power