By Grace O’Donnell and Griffin Barfield
Ahead of Clemson’s week one game against Georgia last August, there was the same nostalgic buzz in the air as there always is when the border rivals meet. After more than a century of football, the teams had built up quite the reputation. However, a special account chronicling the two teams’ history was nearly lost to time – if it weren’t for two Clemson students’ determination ahead of the 2024 matchup.
The story begins back in 2013 when author T. Kyle King published Fighting Like Cats and Dogs. King grew up a Georgia fan, living in Atlanta and attending school in Athens. After school, he became a co-host of The Dawg Show and, eventually, of Dawg Sports, reporting on all things Georgia Athletics.
In his writing, King highlights the biggest moments of the Clemson and Georgia football rivalry. He begins in 1977, a time in which he says, “there was no more closely contested or nationally significant rivalry in college football” than the one between the border neighbors, and extends all the way through the 2003 season. After that, the teams did not meet for a decade.
Sounds interesting, right? There’s just one problem – its publishing came to a halt in 2021.
For a book that “always sold well” according to Allison Mero, director of Clemson University Press since 2017, King’s was gone at an inconvenient time: the beginning of the Clemson vs. Georgia series that occurred in 2021 and 2024.
The Reprint
Mero put the book’s reprinting on University Press’ back burner until the spring of 2024. However, she later discovered the problem was more complex than it going out of print.
First, there was no backlist on file for the book allowing for online production of the text. Second, although most books in modern publishing are created in Adobe InDesign, there were no previous InDesign files.
With these issues combined, a forced manual reprint was necessary.
Two Clemson students helped with the book’s revival: Mars O’Keefe, a junior Art major, and Yana Gudakova, an editorial assistant studying both English and Spanish Language and Literature. O’Keefe updated the cover while Gudakova retyped the book, something she did with no prior typeset experience. The press staff then reviewed it after the typeset was complete.
Typesetting was done through optic character recognition (OCR), a feature provided through Adobe Acrobat. The technology converts scanned images and text into editable files much quicker than arduously retyping an entire 248-page book.
The entire operation was no easy task but, because of the team’s hard work, the book was reprinted and released before the Clemson versus Georgia game last August in Atlanta. For O’Keefe and Gudakova, it was a semester-long project requiring dedication and countless hours of work. For Mero, it was a chance to preserve the legacy of Clemson.
“The press is small but mighty – our mission is to publish high quality scholarship and publish books that need to be published, regardless of how many sell,” she said. Her goal is “professionalizing CU Press and trying to make books more available and discoverable.”
The press is an institution within the Clemson Library but technically is its own entity. Therefore, Mero says she is not a librarian, rather a historian.
As a historian, she considers herself “an interpreter of facts.” After reading King’s work, Mero decided the content was fairly unbiased and worthy of publishing. It was not heavily skewed towards either team and presents more like a recounting of games than an opinion.
“It taps into the people who have been fans for decades,” she said. “That’s who this book is for. It’s for getting the legacy right.”
King spent time on both campuses while writing, making sure to emphasize successes from both sides of the rivalry. His research included a brief meeting with ex-head coach Danny Ford, which King appreciated.
“While I was introduced to the rivalry as a Georgia partisan, I spent a great deal of time at Clemson doing research for the book,” he said.
“I have a great deal of respect for the Clemson community and I tried very hard to do justice to both sides. Particularly in light of the fact that there was a time when conference expansion threatened to end this rivalry, I am strongly encouraged to know that current students recognize the ongoing vitality of the rivalry and want to make certain others are aware of it, as well.”
King no longer writes for Dawg Sports. He stopped around the time of his book release, putting down the pen and paper to work as a senior partner for a law firm in Atlanta. Although no longer actively writing, the reprinting of King’s novel has him both “humble and grateful that this important aspect of history has been preserved.”
While the Bulldogs enjoy a modern level of success to compete with the 1980s, King has no regrets about leaving the press box.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my time working in that arena, but I left because I thought it was time to go, and I haven’t looked back,” he said.
“Again, I’m grateful to everyone who stepped in to fill whatever void I may have left, and they’re doing a wonderful job in all of those areas, so I haven’t had any reason to wonder about what might have been.”
Clemson University Press was instrumental in maintaining such a beloved piece of Clemson’s history. “We’re just glad that it’s going to be available,” Mero said.
The book can be purchased on Clemson University Press’ website, where it is currently the best-selling title, while the opportunity for an e-book is still forthcoming.
For King, he got his wish in the end: seeing a piece of Tiger versus Bulldog history become available once again.
“The great thing about college football is that so many people are so passionate about it that they leave behind a lasting record of their heritage and intensity, which especially comes to life in the local press and the student newspapers from the period,” he said.
“There is an old saying that journalism is the first draft of history, and in this case, it really is true.”
