The title "Go Carolina" is an ironic reflection on what the author could have said to delay his ordeal at the hands of his speech therapist, Miss Samson. In the end, it would have made no difference, but his inability to pronounce the letter "s" was immediately revealed when he answered "Definitely State. State all the way" upon being asked which of two college football teams he supported.

Sedaris says that he could not have given a truthful answer, which was that he did not know or care about college football, because the question was not a polite enquiry or a conversational gambit, but a test of identity and masculinity:

You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn't like sports.

Later, he connects his speech impediment to his lack of interest in sports as well as his low status in the school's social hierarchy, when he notes that there were "no popular students" among the speech therapist's clients. Neither were there any girls. All the students with lisps were stereotypically effeminate boys who "kept movie star scrapbooks and made their own curtains." The speech therapist's office, he says, might as well have had a sign on the door which read "FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA." This gave Sedaris the idea that what Samson was attempting to correct was not so much a technical inability as a personality flaw, as though learning to pronounce the letter "s" would also instill in him a rugged masculinity, and make him an enthusiastic supporter of a football team.