Matt McCord, ’95 music, is a onetime marching band trumpet player, a former Carolina drum major and a Gamecock football season ticket holder. He is also a father of three — and he’s determined to pass his outsized Carolina pride to the next generation.
“When all my children were born, I wore the same Carolina shirt, we would sing a little ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ and then I would teach them the alma mater,” he says with a laugh. “Right after they put them in my arms, I’d go, ‘And now we’re going to learn to sing this song.’ We’d do it right there in the delivery room.”
McCord came to USC on a music scholarship, earned the coveted drum major assignment in the spring semester of his freshman year and remained atop the podium until he graduated 3½ years later. He is one of just seven USC drum majors to hold the position longer than two years.
“I’m so proud of them. That band is at the core of Carolina tradition, and they’re carrying on the same thing that I carried 30 years ago.”
Now an attorney and judge in McDonough, Georgia, he returns to Columbia — or as he jokingly calls it, “the promised land” — for football Saturdays in the fall. And watching the Mighty Sound of the Southeast take the field never fails to stir something in his chest.
“I’m so proud of them,” he says. “That band is at the core of Carolina tradition, and they’re carrying on the same thing that I carried 30 years ago.”
It’s one reason he recently decided to give back to his alma mater. One gift, the McCord Family Band Support Endowment Fund, will help pay for a wall at the Copenhaver Band Hall honoring USC drum majors over the past hundred years. Another gift, the Miriam Howard Barge Endowed Scholarship Fund, is even closer to his heart.
“My mom was a schoolteacher who raised two little boys by herself and worked three jobs,” he says. “Carolina gave me a scholarship, and when Mom dropped me off at college, she was so proud. Then, when I became drum major, she would do anything in her power to come to the Carolina football games and see me on the field.”
A few years ago, Mom was diagnosed with dementia. After she passed in 2022, McCord knew he wanted to honor the woman who encouraged his love of music and helped him realize his marching band dreams.
“When I knew that she was fading, I said, ‘Hey Mom, I just want you to know that there’s going to be a scholarship at South Carolina in your name,” he says. “‘For as long as I can, I’m going to go back and tell some kid there who you were.’”