Davis: Lets kick this thing off, please!

It's almost football season and that means one thing: Columnist Scott Davis is back to share his opinions about Carolina football. Each week during the season, Davis, who has followed Carolina sports for more than 20 years, provideS us with a humorous view of being a Gamecock fan.

Thank God it's over.

Look, there's no such thing as an enjoyable off-season. No matter what happens in May and June and July, I wake up depressed each morning. Something's missing. And that something is football. Trying to live without football is like going through life without the ability to smell or taste. You can survive, but nothing you come across has any flavor.

So the last thing I needed during all this downtime was more bad news. But for some reason, the University of South Carolina just had the worst summer on record since…well, maybe ever. Only Tom Cruise had a tougher few months than we did. When you think about the history of terrible summers, you think about Nixon in '74, you think about the Atlanta Braves in '89 and you think about the July in '95 when I was replaced in my radio disc jockey job by a computer.

Those are all ugly, brutal summers, and I don't want to take anything away from them. But at times these last few weeks, it was harder to be a USC fan than to look cool in a Backstreet Boys T-shirt. If ever an off-season deserved capital punishment, this one did.

Every day, it was something new: suspensions, academic casualties, lingering NCAA problems from the Holtz era, irate high school coaches, ex-players accusing Steve Spurrier of false "promises." Even our non-football programs weren't safe, as the alleged "done deal" that supposedly ensured a new USC baseball stadium for 2007 suddenly hit an inevitable roadblock with Columbia City Council. Poor Ray Tanner. After all the winning this guy has done, they should build a stadium wherever he wants. If Tanner wanted to put the stadium in the parking lot of a Lowe's on Two Notch Road, they should put it there. If he wants to build a roof over Williams-Brice Stadium and put the baseball park on top of that roof, they should. If he wants to build a stadium that is only accessible by boat, then they should find a suitable site in Charleston Harbor. Just get it done.

On top of it all, USC became the first sports team without a Native American-related mascot to ever be accused of political incorrectness when PETA announced that the word "gamecocks" somehow promotes cockfighting. Seriously, how it this even possible? PETA has a problem with USC's football team now? PETA? With all those beavers and wolverines to save from getting caught in traps up in Canada, how does PETA even have time to be worried about nicknames? Who else plans to come after us, Michael Moore? At this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if our entire defensive secondary was eaten by rabid wolves.

That's why I've never been more excited to actually kick a season off. And that's really saying something, because I'm usually more excited for the beginning of a football season than Nick Lachey was on his honeymoon night. You know how dorks get when a new Star Wars movie comes out, how they gather in the parking lot of a movie theater days early, dressed in Obi-Wan Kenobi robes and Darth Vader masks? For all practical purposes, that's me in the weeks just before football season.

I'm so ready to do this that I may start tailgating on Wednesday night. Except by then, I'll already be tailgating for the Georgia game on September 10, because I started tailgating for the Central Florida game over a week ago.

The last few weeks before a season are the ones that are the toughest to take. In early June, the idea of football is still so distant that you don't waste too much time thinking about how far away it is. You can't. You'll lose the will to live.

But when August rolls around and daily reports start filtering in from the practice fields and buddies start calling you at the office to finalize tailgating menus, those last 10 or 12 days before kickoff start to seem like entire decades. I catch myself staring at the clock with a tight feeling in my chest, like I'm running late for a job interview. I almost wish I could sleep through August.

Right now, almost anything barring a loss to Central Florida will represent good news for this football team. I'm telling you, even interceptions and penalties will feel better than PETA press conferences or questions about Scholarshipgate. Even if I'm talking to my friends about all the fumbles and dropped passes next week, it will still represent an improvement over talking to them about why some of our players decided to steal pictures of themselves from the stadium. (Quick aside: Has there ever been a sillier scandal than that? Players taking pictures of themselves from the stadium? With all the coverage of that fateful evening, you'd have thought our offensive line was running an escort service out of the Floyd Football Building. I don't know whether to laugh or cry anymore.)

People love to make fun of Gamecock fans for their blind optimism, but those are usually people that don't actually spend very much time around Gamecock fans. Those folks assume that we're glass-half-full dreamers just because we have enough character and heart to actually pack our stadium every week, unlike our friends at the University of Lake Hartwell, where Wake and Duke games draw less attendees than some family reunions.

The real truth is that Gamecock fans always have hope, but it's deeply tempered by nagging doubt and by the reality of our frightening history. Sure, we may get excited when new coaches are hired, but who doesn't? When I'm actually sitting inside Williams-Brice Stadium, I mostly hear fretting and grumbling – not predictions of Sugar Bowl wins.

Let me put it to you this way: We just hired Steve Spurrier, acknowledged by pretty much the entire universe as the greatest college coach of the last 20 years, and yet I haven't spoken to a single Gamecock fan that feels great about the upcoming season. Not one. And I'm not even kidding.

I've talked to some people that feel OK about our chances, heard a few thousand 6-5 predictions and about as many 5-6 forecasts. And on the flip side, I've heard some 2-9 and 3-8 stuff, too. What I haven't heard is anything as high as 8-3. From anyone. And I talk to people about this all day, every day. I don't think there's any definition by which you could call this "blind optimism."

You might even expect most of the Gamecock faithful to predict a year or two of rebuilding, followed by glorious seasons of championships and SEC title games under Spurrier. But I'm honestly not even hearing that. What I'm hearing is that we just don't know what to think anymore, not after the ultimate failure of the Lou Holtz Experience and the nightmarish off-season that followed his departure. What I'm hearing is that Spurrier might be the one who finally gets it done, or he might not, and that if he can't do it, maybe it can't be done. What I'm hearing is that there might not be a coach who gets it done. Ever.

Either way, we're tailgating on September 1.

And that's the greatest lesson I learned this summer. What I learned was that it is possible for Gamecock fans to actually consider that we may never be big winners. It's possible for us to entertain the idea that we may just never make it happen in football, that it isn't meant to be for us to win it all.

Despite it all, we still believe in this thing. Win or lose, we still want to be a part of it. 4-7, 7-4...whatever. We're still tailgating you under the table and we're still screaming when "2001" starts. We're still dying to get through August, still calling each other up to talk and gripe and share our excitement and our disappointment together.

After 112 years of losing, we still can't wait to start another season. You want to ask me why I'm a Gamecock fan? That's why.

And by the way, I do believe Steve Spurrier's the answer. Unlike some other recent Carolina coaches, he doesn't make excuses about what's holding us back. He sincerely believes we can win here, and that's enough for me. I tend to respect the opinions of people who have won seven SEC championships.

But I believed Lou Holtz was the answer, too. Heck, I even believed Brad Scott was.

But you know what? Long after Spurrier's legacy is in the history books, no matter what the outcome is, we'll still be there every single Saturday filling up the stadium.

We'll still be there. We always are.

To contact Davis or view other articles he's written, click here.

Give GamecockCentral.com a try. Click here to take advantage of our 7-Day Free Trial and get all the INSIDE SCOOP on Gamecock football, basketball, baseball and recruiting.