Elite Letterman’s Club
‘We were different, to say the least’
After 20 years, the Elite Letterman’s Club is hanging up its leather helmets and keeping its shirts on
By Brett Buckner
It started with a dare, issued just before kickoff of Jax State’s 2004 Homecoming football game. A tradition was born that day when a bunch of ROTC alumni decided to take their shirts off and “paint up.” Together, they would become known among Gamecock fans as the Elite Letterman’s Club (ELC).
But after 20 years of leading Homecoming parades, cheers and the football teams onto the field, the Letterman’s Club is hanging up the leather helmets and red football pants that have become as famous as the letters spelling out G-O G-A-M-E-C-O-C-K-S-! painted across its members’ chests.
“We got old,” said ELC member Mike Holloway, laughing. “Most of us are in our late 60s, and some of us are almost 70. We did the math and realized that we’ve got more yesterdays than tomorrows. It was time to hang the spurs up and ride off into the sunset.”
The ELC were members of the Jax State ROTC program who graduated between 1979 and 1984. “It’s a brotherhood,” said ELC member Dave Bowles, who graduated in 1980.
“All the training we did, all the sweating, everything we went through together, that’s how we bonded. We had outstanding mentors who were not just teaching us military stuff, they were forging us into men.”
Around 2000, ROTC graduates, all having recently retired from military service, started converging on Jacksonville from around the country to join other alumni for Homecoming.
“Things really took off around 2004,” Bowles said. That year, they were in the stands, cheering and waiting for kickoff when someone shouted, “Hey, I’ve got some paint … red paint. Let's paint our chests.” Someone else added, “Oh come on. You won’t do it.” What happened next, made the ELC Jax State legends.
“I said, ‘I dare you,’” remembered Holloway, who graduated in 1981. “They said, ‘Oh Yeah?’ I said it again. ‘I dare ya.’”
Dare accepted. “We all ran to the stadium bathroom, stripped off our shirts and painted up right before kickoff,” Holloway said. “We came walking down the steps and the fans erupted in applause. Here's eight old men walking down the steps with no shirts and just their blue jeans on.”
It was roughly eight men – memories vary – that first time. They made their way down to the front row, standing right behind the opposing team.
“Nobody had ever done anything like that at a Jax State football game before,” Bowles said. “It was a testosterone-fueled moment that, if we’d taken time to think, probably wouldn’t have happened. But when a bunch of military guys challenge each other, crazy things happen.”
The pivotal moment was unexpectedly captured forever, added ELC member Gene Wisdom.
“We were standing along the rail on the front row,” said Wisdom, who graduated in 1981. “This cameraman down on the sideline looks up at us, and we're cutting up and so forth. He ended up being a photographer for Sports Illustrated. We didn’t make the cover or anything, but we made it to si.com.” Wisdom has the photograph framed at his home in Knoxville, Tenn.
The next year, the ELC added red football pants to their ensemble. Later came the old-timey, leather football helmets, matching red shoes, and eye black under their eyes. Some have temporary Elite Letterman Club tattoos on their arms. They started marching in the annual Homecoming parade. “People would sometimes mistake us for former football players,” Bowles said. “We’d take that as a compliment.”
In 2005, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity became a Jax State tradition when Gamecocks football coach, Jack Crowe, invited the ELC to lead his team onto the field before the Homecoming game. “When we got the call, I got tears in my eyes,” Bowles said, his voice filled with emotion. “What an amazing honor and an amazing experience.” They’ve done it for every Homecoming game since.
“It just kept getting bigger,” Bowles said. “It’s fun and so uplifting, which is part of it, but the biggest thing is the brotherhood. We're all in each other's corners. We all act like wild fans at the game, but the other 364 days of the year we're just good friends.”
The ELC even took the act on the road, painting up whenever the Gamecocks traveled, especially if it was into SEC country. “Their fans started swarming us,” Holloway said. “We were late for kickoffs at Kentucky and Florida and some other places because the other team’s fans would hold us up to take photos and give us high fives.”
Through the years, the ELC has not only led cheers from the stands but raised awareness about the importance of alumni groups and maintaining the relationships built during those college years, said Dr. Wendy Cash, Director of Alumni Engagement. “I am grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and know this is not completely goodbye, but that future years may just look a little different,” she said. “I know they will still be there and will still provide the same unwavering love and support they’ve always given the university.”
Since 2024, the ELC has sponsored and endowed a scholarship for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Created by David Bowles and the Elite Letterman's Club, the scholarship benefits a student who is enrolled or soon to be enrolled in military science courses at Jax State. The scholarship covers tuition, fees, books, room and board.
“It’s important for us to give back, to have something that honors what ROTC meant to us,” Wisdom said. “This is for the future.”
Though the ELC is stepping back, it will never be forgotten. “It’s such a unique legacy that younger generations will remember for a long time,” Dr. Cash said. “We all will. The more you get to know them, the more you love them. They are a core group of alumni who truly support and love Jax State.”
ELC members are committed. For example, Bowles has only missed three Homecoming games since 1999. He missed one game because of a head-on collision the week before Homecoming.
“I was in crutches and pretty messed up,” Bowles said. “I was still going to go. But my wife and common sense prevailed. I watched it from home on television.”
Another time was because of his niece's wedding. “I told her back in January when she got engaged, don't make me choose between Homecoming and going to your wedding,” Bowles said. “And that's exactly what she did. The wife had something to do with that one, too. But I had to go, especially since I was reading the Bible in the wedding.”
‘Getting old ain’t so bad’
The number of ELC members at Homecoming games ranges from 10 to 13. “Not everyone paints up, and they get harassed a little bit,” Bowles said. “Some years we’ve got enough to spell out the full ‘GO GAMECOCKS!’ and some years it’s just ‘GO COCKS.’ We’ve learned to work with what we’ve got.”
Over the years, the ELC has become a family affair with wives, kids, and grandkids. At its heart, the ELC is a brotherhood of men who, as ROTC cadets, went through something that carried them through some of the darkest, most challenging times of their lives. "We always kept in touch, this same group of guys," said Bowles, who now writes children's books at his home in Gloucester, Va. "We've been best men in each other's weddings, and we've been to funerals together. It's a bond that's gone on for 45 years and only gets stronger."
Over the past five or six years, as the men have aged and health issues crept in, knowing how many were physically able to jog onto the field was often a game-time decision. Even then, members point out, they run alongside, rather than lead, the football players. “We are in cross section of America,” Bowles said. “We have heart surgeries. We have knee replacements and any number of health issues that the rest of the population has at 67 or so years old.”
That’s why it was decided that this past Homecoming would be their last. “It’s been an absolute joy, but It was just time,” Wisdom said. “There’s no shame in that.”
But what a final performance it was. Holloway, who’s always “painted up” before games, has disabilities that have mostly left him unable to jog or run. But when the ELC needed him, he was not going to let them down.
“Somehow, that day I stretched out my body enough so that I could go,” he said. “I told ‘em that I'll do my best. Just please don't make me go faster than a slow jog. If the players run over me, I’m going to be a laughingstock in front of 20,000 people.”
Holloway pushed through, driven by encouragement from the players and memories of his own glory days. “It's almost like your body remembers what it was like during those high school and college days,” he said. “You’re out on the turf, and you're running with the players. It gives you a feeling of being useful. Somehow, you find motivation. You find the energy to just pick your feet up and keep going.”
Though in their late 60s, ELC members jogged from the Gamecocks' end zone to about the 20-yard line, then made a U-turn back to the end zone and off the field. “It looked like I was praying the whole time,” Holloway said. “It was wonderful. I felt great again, younger … if just for a little while.”
The final game day turnout was perfect. “We had guys for all the letters,” said Bowles, who was the ‘G’ in their formation. “We spelled out ‘GAMECOCKS’ with an exclamation point.”
The day went off without a hitch … mostly. Around the 50-yard line, Bowles realized that his right shoestring was untied. “I prayed all the way to the end zone that I didn’t trip because those [football players] are so big. I looked to my right, and I was running next to this massive human being whose his shoulder pads were the same level as my head. If I’d fallen, he’d have killed me.”
Knowing it was their last Homecoming in the spotlight made the day bittersweet. But there was also a sense of relief because the ELC was going out on their own terms rather than having someone ask them to quit. They may have inspired future generations along the way.
“To go into the crowd as a bunch of old guys and see the reception of the students in the student section was absolutely fantastic,” Bowles said. "Maybe it gives them something to look forward to, seeing that getting old ain't so bad after all."
