The State newspaper of Columbia, SC, has reported that South Carolina is expected to announce a two-game football series with East Carolina. The paper's account noted that the deal might include a game in Charlotte.

The report appears to reinforce a story carried by the paper last month in which it cited USC athletic director Eric Hyman as identifying ECU as the type of school the Gamecocks should be playing in its non-Southeastern Conference games.

ECU and USC are not strangers on the gridiron. The programs first collided in 1977, with the Gamecocks claiming a 19-16 victory. After a hiatus of several years, the schools launched a 14-game series that ran from 1984 through 1999.

USC handily won all seven games that were played through 1990, but the Pirates turned the tables starting in 1991, winning five of the remaining seven meetings. Skip Holtz, East Carolina's head coach, was in the first year of a six-year stint on the Gamecock staff of his father, Lou Holtz, when the Pirates claimed a 21-3 victory in 1999 that ended the series.