If you asked any South Carolina football player, he'd almost certainly downplay the trip to No. 22 Clemson that the Gamecocks will make Saturday.
"We'll just prepare like it's a normal game," redshirt senior quarterback Dylan Thompson said.
If you asked head coach Steve Spurrier, he'd probably tell you it's just a game too. And in a sense, he's telling you the truth.
Everything is a game for Spurrier when it comes to this rivalry. A mind game. A chess game. A game that he's winning.
He'll refer to Clemson as the "Upstate team" year-round, because he knows the caustic effect it has on Tiger fans.
Following South Carolina's Nov. 15 win over Florida, Spurrier learned of Clemson's simultaneous loss to Georgia Tech. He then took one of his patented jabs at the "Upstate team."
Tiger fans took his comments as a cheap shot at freshman quarterback Deshaun Watson, who was injured in the game.
Spurrier responded with this:
"I'll try not to say anything to upset them, through the next couple of weeks anyway," he said. "We've got our own issues. They need to worry about their issues."
The Head Ball Coach will keep pouring gasoline onto the fire like this until Clemson stops him, something it hasn't been able to do for the last five years.
During the Gamecocks' five-year run of dominance over their in-state rival, each new meeting has felt like the one that could see it all come crashing down for South Carolina.
But the games haven't really been close.
Clemson was the higher-ranked team entering three out of the last five contests, but the Gamecocks' smallest margin of victory during the streak was its 10-point win over the Tigers in 2012.
And Spurrier took last season's 31-17 drubbing as an opportunity to point that fact out.
"We're very fortunate, we know that," Spurrier said following the win a year ago, "They're a good team that continues not playing very well when they play us, for some reason."
Clemson has scored 17 points in three of the last five games, but no more than that. South Carolina hasn't dipped under 27 points in five years.
"We're playing, obviously, the same jerseys, but different players," Thompson said following South Carolina's win over South Alabama. "We'll be fired up, they'll be fired up and we'll see who wins."
In 2009, Stephen Garcia was the player in South Carolina colors that led the way, tossing three touchdowns in a 34-17 win. The following year, Spencer Lanning accounted for 14 points on his own in the kicking game. 2011 saw Connor Shaw throw for three scores and rush for another. The very next year, as a redshirt sophomore, Thompson started for an injured Shaw and promptly threw three touchdowns of his own. Shaw came right back in 2013 and accounted for two more touchdowns.
Same jerseys, different players, same results.
In this year's installation, Clemson is once again the higher-ranked team. With five losses, South Carolina doesn't have a ranking to claim for the first time since 2009.
Regardless, if the Gamecocks are to win for a sixth time in a row, Spurrier will continue to remind the Tigers of it.
He has a rule that bans Gatorade showers outside the context of a championship game. But he knows he's going to get doused every time he beats Clemson and chances are he likes it that way.
He may have ulterior motives for his arbitrary rule. It provides another convenient platform to undermine the Tigers.
"I had to get the Gatorade out of my hair," Spurrier said following the 2013 win over Clemson at Williams-Brice Stadium. "You're supposed to do that for bowl games, not home victories."