The Loser Buys the Barbecue: Gardner-Webb Wins a Third Straight North-South Barbecue Bowl, 12-10

With six minutes left on Saturday night in Charleston, South Carolina, the score was tied at 10 and the home team had the ball on its own 1-yard line. Charleston Southern’s quarterback took the snap and dropped back into his own end zone. Gardner-Webb defender Tye Holsey got there first.

A tackle in the end zone is a safety, worth two points. Those two points decided the game, 12-10, and they decided something else as well. Charleston Southern now owes Gardner-Webb a barbecue dinner.

The two schools call their annual football game the North-South Barbecue Bowl. Gardner-Webb University sits in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Charleston Southern University is in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Since 2024 they have played for a trophy with a metal hog on top, and the terms are written into the announcement: the losing team supplies a barbecue feast to the winning side.

The winners also pick the menu. They choose North Carolina style or South Carolina style, which means the game settles, for one year, an argument the two states have carried on for generations.

Twelve to ten, and dinner is on Charleston

Saturday’s game at Buccaneer Field was the third edition of the bet, and it was a defensive grind. Neither team scored in the first quarter. The teams traded field goals before halftime, a 19-yarder for Gardner-Webb and a 48-yarder for Charleston Southern.

The home team struck first after the break. Running back Hakeem Watters broke up the middle for a 62-yard touchdown, and Charleston Southern led 10-3 heading into the fourth quarter. For the first time, the hog looked ready to move south.

Gardner-Webb arrived with a passing offense. Cole Pennington, its quarterback, led his level of college football with 1,483 passing yards through five games, per the school. On Saturday the Bulldogs needed one long drive and their defense. The drive came first, 12 plays and 72 yards across nearly six minutes. Pennington finished it with a nine-yard touchdown pass to Brian Green Jr., which tied the game with 10:57 to play.

Then came the punt. According to Charleston Southern’s own game report, Gardner-Webb downed it at the 1-yard line, and on the next snap Holsey brought down quarterback Lek Powell in the end zone. The clock read 5:56.

The Gardner-Webb defense did the rest. It held Charleston Southern to 178 total yards, sacked Powell five times, and allowed no conversions on 12 third downs. A fourth-down stop in the closing seconds ended the last threat.

Linebacker Tre Yanez led everyone with 13 tackles. Two days later, Stats Perform, the company that runs the national awards for this level of college football, named him its national defensive player of the week. The hog stays in North Carolina, and the catering bill stays in Charleston.

The winner picks the sauce

The stakes only make sense with a little barbecue geography. In the Carolinas, barbecue means pork, and the fight is over how to dress it.

Gardner-Webb plays for the western half of North Carolina. NCpedia, the state library’s encyclopedia, places the center of that style in the town of Lexington, where cooks favor chopped or sliced pork shoulder with a thin, tomato-based sauce. Locals call the sauce dip. It comes with hush puppies and a red slaw colored with ketchup.

South Carolina’s tourism office counts four official sauces: mustard, vinegar and pepper, light tomato and heavy tomato. The mustard sauce of the Midlands, the middle of the state, is often credited as South Carolina’s unofficial sauce. NCpedia notes that mustard has crossed the state line and found admirers farther north, which is the kind of border crossing this game was built to argue about.

The schools spelled out the choice when they announced the game. The feast would be “North Carolina-style (Western BBQ, of course) or South Carolina-style, as chosen by the victors.” The “of course” reads like Gardner-Webb’s. The release carried a Boiling Springs dateline.

So far the choice has belonged to one team. Gardner-Webb has won all three North-South games, and neither school’s game report says what the Runnin’ Bulldogs ordered.

It started as an in-state bet

The hog is older than this rivalry. In 2021, Gardner-Webb and Campbell University, a school on the eastern side of North Carolina, announced the North Carolina East/West BBQ Trophy. Their campuses sit 218 miles apart by car, on opposite sides of the state’s own barbecue divide.

The terms were the same, with one twist. The loser had to supply barbecue from its own region. That meant eastern style from Campbell, which NCpedia describes as built on vinegar and pepper, or western style from Gardner-Webb.

The schools planned to have the trophy presented by Bob Garner, the author of three books on North Carolina barbecue, who also produces specials for PBS North Carolina. The two presidents handled the trash talk. “Fear the hump,” said Campbell’s J. Bradley Creed, whose teams are the Fighting Camels. Gardner-Webb’s William Downs apologized in advance for the win he expected.

Downs did not get it. Campbell took the first Barbecue Bowl, 42-28, on October 9, 2021, in Boiling Springs.

Campbell later moved to another conference, and the bet needed a new partner. Gardner-Webb and Charleston Southern were the last two original football members of the Big South, a conference that began sponsoring the sport in 2002. In February 2024, Downs reached out to Charleston Southern president Keith Faulkner.

Faulkner said yes quickly, and with a complication. “As a North Carolina native and now anchored in the best place to live in South Carolina,” he said, he was looking forward to “a new pigskin tradition.” He also told the Runnin’ Bulldogs to get ready to walk the plank. FootballScoop, a college football trade site, called it the sport’s most delicious rivalry.

Three games, eight points

The football has been better than the jokes. Every North-South Barbecue Bowl has gone to the final minutes.

In November 2024, also in Charleston, Gardner-Webb led by 10 late. Charleston Southern scored with 26 seconds left, recovered the onside kick, and lined up a field goal to tie. The kick drifted right, and Gardner-Webb won 17-14.

In October 2025 the game moved to Boiling Springs. The teams combined for 40 points in the fourth quarter, and Gardner-Webb kicker Charlie Viorel won it with a 48-yard field goal as time expired. The final was 30-27.

Add Saturday’s safety and the three games have been decided by three points, three points and two. That is eight points across three years of football, and three dinners owed.

The larger series tilts the same way. Saturday was the 24th meeting between the schools. Gardner-Webb led the series 14-9 coming in and has now won five in a row. Before that streak began in 2022, Charleston Southern had won five straight of its own.

Why a hog works

College football is full of odd trophies, and most of them are symbols. This one comes with a bill. A team that loses by two points on a safety has to feed the people who beat it, in the style those people choose.

Gardner-Webb’s interim president, Nate Evans, put the appeal plainly before last year’s game. “Football, BBQ, and bragging rights ... what’s not to love?” he said.

Charleston Southern has its own line ready. Before the 2025 game, Faulkner promised to bring the hog trophy “back to where it belongs,” in Charleston. Charleston Southern has yet to win it, and the next chance comes next fall.

Until then the debate stays where Saturday left it. North Carolina 3, South Carolina 0, and the loser is buying.

Sources

Gardner-Webb Athletics, “Runnin’ Bulldogs Use Fourth-Quarter Rally to Capture BBQ Bowl Again” (Oct. 3, 2026), game preview (Oct. 2, 2026) and Yanez national award (Oct. 5, 2026); Charleston Southern Athletics, “Late Safety Pushes Gardner-Webb Over Charleston Southern in North / South Barbecue Bowl” (Oct. 3, 2026); Gardner-Webb Athletics, “Rivals Gardner-Webb and Charleston Southern Announce North-South BBQ Bowl” (Feb. 1, 2024), 2024 game report, 2025 game report and 2021 game report; Gardner-Webb University, “Hogs, Hits and Hometown Pride” (Sept. 22, 2025); Campbell University, “East/West Rivals, Campbell and Gardner-Webb announce BBQ Bowl Game” (Sept. 30, 2021); FootballScoop, “FCS schools announce college football’s most delicious rivalry” (Feb. 1, 2024); NCpedia, “Barbecue”; Discover South Carolina, “South Carolina Barbecue”.

Images: hog trophy and Bridges Barbecue Lodge photo courtesy Gardner-Webb University; 2026 game photo by Abby Williams, GWU Sports Photography; 2021 trophy photo courtesy Carolina Gridiron; 2025 celebration courtesy Gardner-Webb Athletics.