South Carolina Football: Is #KitchensGate a big deal?

Last season, former NFL head coach Freddie Kitchens was an analyst for the South Carolina football program. Now, he is the tight ends coach for Mack Brown and the North Carolina Tar Heels.

Since the Gamecocks’ 31-17 loss to UNC on Saturday, speculation has abounded that Kitchens might have shared some “insider secrets” about the USC offense, leading to some of the Gamecocks’ struggles on the offensive line and in the running game.

The first bit of evidence to support the #KitchensGate accusations came from North Carolina Tar Heel pass rusher Kaimon Rucker. Rucker, after the game, said that the UNC defensive front could “tell when USC was about to go into a pass.”

The early thoughts about Rucker’s comments centered around the possibility of South Carolina’s offensive linemen “tipping” the plays with their alignments or how they stood in their stances.

However, rumors began to circulate that Kitchens was responsible for providing the defense with tips from his time working for the South Carolina football program.

Earlier this week, Kitchens was asked about Rucker’s comments and if he did, indeed, share secret information from USC to his new UNC players. Listen to Kitchens’ response below.

When given the opportunity to deny the allegations, Freddie Kitchens did not flat-out admit to providing intel to his new team, but he did everything but say it. Kitchens said that this type of situation “is not unique” to the South Carolina vs. North Carolina matchup and that he would “leave it at that.” He did make clear that UNC was not “stealing signals like in baseball.”

But is what Freddie Kitchens did a big deal?

Absolutely. But it isn’t a big deal for the reason many fans might think.

It is not a big deal at all that Freddie Kitchens supplied his new team with helpful information that could provide them with an edge in their game against his old team.

What is a big deal is that it was successful.

If Shane Beamer and his South Carolina football staff didn’t see this coming and didn’t switch up a few things for the purpose of throwing off Kitchens or any other UNC staffer familiar with the Gamecock program, that is an error in judgment by South Carolina.

Stuff like this has been going on in the coaching profession the entire time that coaching sports has existed. No business would ever see a high-ranking employee leave for a competitor and think that every secret was safe. Football programs can be no different.

To be clear, North Carolina did not beat South Carolina on Saturday night because Freddie Kitchens used information from his old job to help him at his new job. Could it have helped? Sure. Kaimon Rucker seemed to think so.

However, the Tar Heels whipped the Gamecocks up front for most of the game on both sides of the ball. A few secrets and shared tendencies would not account for the differences between the two teams in the trenches.

What exactly transpired probably will never come to light, but it shouldn’t matter. For Gamecock fans, North Carolina won the game, and it’s time to move on to Furman and the SEC schedule that comes after that.