6 Things South Carolinians Do at a Tailgate That Nobody Else Would

South Carolina is the only state that has made boiled peanuts its official snack by law.

That’s only the start of game day here.

These are the things South Carolinians do at a tailgate that nobody else would.

1. Watching From a Cockaboose

Fans tailgate outside Williams-Brice Stadium from inside a railroad car.

Twenty-two of them sit in a row along the old rail spur, nicknamed cockabooses by the Gamecock fans who own them.

Each cockaboose comes with a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a rooftop deck looking straight down onto Gamecock Walk.

Each one is a train car with working plumbing, parked a few hundred feet from the stadium gates since 1990.

2. Nation’s Oldest Steeplechase Meet

South Carolina’s Carolina Cup has filled the infield and lawns at Camden’s Springdale Race Course every spring since 1930, when the first running drew about 3,000 spectators.

The race has run every year since, skipping only three seasons during World War II.

That run makes it one of the oldest steeplechase meets still run anywhere in the country.

Nearly a century old.

Fans still turn out in seersucker, bold pastels, and statement hats, a custom nearly as old as the Carolina Cup.

Some families tailgate the same stretch of rail their grandparents claimed decades ago.

3. Boiled Peanuts by Law

South Carolinians keep a pot of peanuts boiling at the tailgate because the state put it in the law books.

South Carolina is the only state that has written boiled peanuts into law as its official snack.

A propane burner and a stockpot show up at many of these tailgates.

The peanuts go from raw and green to soft and salty right there in the parking lot.

A snack, by statute.

4. Chicken Bog by the Potful

Tailgaters also show up to a tailgate with a pot of chicken bog big enough to feed the next three parking spots over.

The one-pot dish of chicken, rice, and sausage fed tobacco harvest crews in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region by the 1920s.

Crews cooked it outdoors in cast iron wash pots over an open fire.

Big pots feed big crowds.

A tailgate is just another crowd to feed.

Loris organizers turned a chicken bog cooking contest into the Bog-Off Festival, pulling around 35,000 people downtown every third Saturday of October.

5. Hash Spooned Over Rice

Families round out the tailgate table with hash spooned over rice, a barbecue side dish the rest of the country mostly skips.

It’s a South Carolina original: Midlands mustard hash in one part of the state, beef hash in the Upstate.

A cooler of hash rides to the tailgate the same way a cooler of drinks does.

Somebody’s uncle guards the pot and reheats it low so it doesn’t scorch before kickoff.

Two regions, two recipes.

6. Palmetto Bowl's Six-Year Ban

The Clemson-South Carolina rivalry has split tailgate lots since 1896, when the two schools met for the first time at the State Fair.

South Carolina won that first meeting, 12-6.

The rivalry grew heated enough that the schools banned it from the schedule for six years.

It's called the Palmetto Bowl now.

Six seasons off the schedule.

Orange napkins and garnet napkins sit on the same folding table every single year.

The Smaller Side of Boatgating

Clemson fans tailgate from the water too, beaching boats along the Clemson Dikes on Lake Hartwell and climbing the embankment straight into Memorial Stadium.

Clemson Marina, across the water, built a dockside grill and branded the scene "boatgating."

It isn't the biggest version of the idea.

Tennessee's Neyland Stadium fleet, known as the Vol Navy, and Washington's Husky Harbor both draw more boats than Lake Hartwell does.

Clemson's version still means walking off a boat and into the stadium without ever touching a parking lot.

Water first, car never.

A Parking Fund Since 1934

Clemson tailgaters who want a spot close to Memorial Stadium work through IPTAY, short for I Pay Ten A Year, a donor fund the university has run since 1934.

Dr. Rupert Fike started it with a group of Clemson alumni after the football team lost to The Citadel, 6-0, in 1931.

That defeat was bad enough that alumni decided the program needed steadier funding.

Dues were ten dollars a year at the start, a name that has stuck for nine decades.

Ten dollars started it.

Point-based donor programs like it now run parking at many major football schools.

Clemson has kept the same ten-dollar name since 1934.

The Mayonnaise on the Table

Tailgate coolers usually carry Duke's Mayonnaise, a brand Eugenia Duke started mixing at her home in Greenville.

The early 1900s is the general era, and 1917 is the year commonly cited for when she began selling it.

She opened a factory in the same city six years later, and the company still makes the product there.

Made in Greenville.