This is true. Leaving the ACC was a football decision. If we had an athletic director who was not also our football coach in 1971, we would almost certainly still be in the ACC. Yes, there were heated, sometimes toxic rivalries in basketball, but cooler heads would have prevailed were it not for Dietzel leading the charge. McGuire understood the importance of the ACC.
Dietzel has a complicated legacy at USC. He was a phenomenal fund raiser, and our facilities improved greatly under his watch. Carolina Coliseum ('68), Carolina Spring Sports complex (including the baseball stadium which would become Sarge Frye Field) and The Roost athletic dorms ('69), Williams-Brice Stadium west upper deck and other improvements ('71), etc. His 1969 football squad also won our first and to this day, only outright conference championship.
But his overall record as head football coach was not even up to Gamecock standards of mediocrity - he went 42-53-1 (.442) over nine seasons. Much worse, he presided over the single greatest blunder in the history of the athletic department, if not the history of NCAA sports, in pulling South Carolina out of the ACC. 20 years in the wilderness followed, along with the destruction of our elite men's basketball program.