Nov. 16, 2005

Charleston, SC - Sure, Clemson and South Carolina don't like each other very much. But how much fun would it be if they didn't play each other in football?

That's the situation The Citadel found itself in last year when its storied rivalry with Virginia Military Institute - the "Military Classic of the South" - lay dormant for a season.

VMI and The Citadel did not play last year for the first time since 1956, breaking a streak of 47 consecutive meetings between the two schools, which had missed only one season since 1920. The last game between the Bulldogs and Keydets was in 2003, when The Citadel won 27-23 in Charlotte to capture the Silver Shako.

All of which begs the question - Do the Bulldogs still consider VMI a rival?

"I missed playing those guys," senior safety Avery Dingle said after last week's 21-0 win over Elon. "I'm telling you, those guys play hard. They're still our rival. Furman is our big rival, but VMI is too, because they play us tough. It's a military battle."

Said senior linebacker Shawn Grant, "It's always a heated thing with the Keydets. We just have to maintain our focus another week and go out and play hard."

The Citadel-VMI game was played in Charlotte's Memorial Stadium in 2002 and '03 at the behest of the Charlotte Sports Commission, which tried to promote the game as a smaller version of the annual Army-Navy battle. That idea died after the game drew crowds of 6,936 and 11,336 fans at the 23,000-seat stadium.

VMI left the Southern Conference to join the Big South after the 2002 season, and the two schools could not settle on a date last season after the two-year deal in Charlotte ended. But Citadel athletic director Les Robinson said the rivalry still is important to The Citadel, and the schools are committed to playing every year, when possible.

"When VMI dropped out of the conference, it changed the schedule and made it more difficult," Robinson said. "The two dates we had open last year, they could not play. But VMI is an extremely important game and a rivalry that we want to continue playing. When VMI left the Southern Conference, The Citadel did everything it could to keep VMI in the conference. We even wanted to let them drop out in football and remain in all other sports if they wanted to.

"But we only had one vote, and they had to do what they think is best, and we understand that. But we want people to understand it creates a different scheduling problem than when they were in the conference."

It will be the first Citadel-VMI game for Bulldogs coach Kevin Higgins, but he'd like to see the rivalry continued for his own reasons.

"When you look on film, those guys don't run quite like they do at Florida State or Ole Miss," he said. "But they are a lot like us. They will play us very hard."

VMI is 3-7 this season under coach Cal McCombs, a Citadel graduate who coached under Red Parker, Bobby Ross and Art Baker at The Citadel. The Keydets beat Charleston Southern soundly (34-12) and gave Wofford a better game (a 38-23 loss) than did The Citadel (28-10). VMI lost games to Lehigh and Gardner-Webb by a total of five points, but has lost its last four games.

"VMI has a veteran group and you can tell they've played a lot of football," Higgins said. "And our guys understand they will play us as hard as any team we've faced this year, just because of the nature of the rivalry."

NOTES

--The Citadel is talking with Division I-A Pittsburgh about playing a game next season, though Robinson said the deal is far from done. With Charleston Southern, Texas A&M and VMI already scheduled for 2006, the Bulldogs have one more non-conference slot to fill. Robinson said he first offered it to Davidson, a non-scholarship I-AA program, but that did not work out. He said he does not necessarily want to play a second I-A opponent. "We'll probably just take the first team it works out with," Robinson said.