Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective.

He writes a weekly newsletter that's emailed each Friday. To sign up for the newsletter, click here. Following is the newsletter for Friday, Aug. 6, 2021.

Scott also writes a weekly column that appears on Gamecock Central during football season.

I’m not sure where the first day of August football practice ranks for me on the “Days I Actually Wake Up With Something Resembling Butterflies of Excitement” list, but it’s definitely on there.

I wouldn’t rank it as high as Christmas, or Halloween, or the morning of the first football game of the season, or the morning of the first SEC football game of the season, or the morning of my wife’s birthday (since my wife really, REALLY cares about her birthday, and it’s absolutely critical for me to wake up on that particular day operating with passion and purpose and at full capacity).

But on the “You Know What…I’m Excited About This” scale, I’d rank it ahead of the first day of spring practice. I’d rank it ahead of the day of the Spring Game. I’d rank it ahead of National Signing Day, especially since Signing Day now happens twice within a couple of weeks and recruiting has settled into something a little more streamlined and a little more predictable.

I’d rank it ahead of most sports-related milestones, in fact, and quite a few other red-letter dates on the calendar that don’t have anything to do with sports.

When August practice starts, I feel a weight lifting from my shoulders. It no longer seems crazy for me to be thinking about football (Full Disclosure: I am always thinking about football).

When August practice starts, I can justify spending four or five hours a day (or 12) cruising through the updates on Gamecock Central, mining all the news emanating from the facilities at Gamecock Park for nuggets of wisdom that might lead to understanding.

When August practice starts, I can legally tell my wife, “I’m not going to have time to do that dinner with your friends next week – it’s football season,” even though a football game will not actually be played for another month.

And when August practice starts, my conversations with other people finally shift away from dull topics like “It’s 95 degrees out there AGAIN????” to the real stuff that matters, the meaningful, life-or-death issues such as “Who is our third-string right guard…and why?” and “Will this really be the year we throw to the tight ends?”

It is August, glorious August. We are free to talk football at last.

The dedicated follower of August football will be annihilated with information, updates, rumors, analyses, interviews and Q&As, breakdowns, status reports, player profiles and scheme summaries. The firehose blast of data is indeed a beautiful thing after months of a dry pipeline, but practiced veterans of this scene such as myself have learned how to take all of this in, process it, filter it and focus on what matters.

You’re looking for gold in them thar’ news nuggets, pardners.

You’re looking for information that can actually help you answer the existential questions that you care about in regards to your football team, like: What is this squad’s identity? Will we actually have one this year? Do these players seem like they want to be here? Do these coaches seem like they want to be here?

I even took the bold and unprecedented step of giving myself a theme and area of focus for my August Practice Studies this year: Get to know my coordinators.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t know much about the foundational blocks of Shane Beamer’s first South Carolina staff, defensive coordinator Clayton White and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield.

White had spent the last few seasons leading the defense at Western Kentucky after stints at N.C. State, UConn and Stanford, while Satterfield had coordinated offenses at UT-Martin, Chattanooga and Temple, served as the head coach at Tennessee Tech and came to the Gamecocks from the Carolina Panthers staff.

And if you need to get to know your coordinators, August is the best time to start introducing yourself to their tendencies, thought processes, goals, hopes and dreams. What would an ideal offense look like under Marcus Satterfield? What does a Clayton White defense want to impose upon its opponents?

We may not really begin to grasp those answers until September. But we can start thinking about them in August.

And we shall.

After eagerly dusting off my first August practice-related story this week (Beamer, Satterfield discuss what USC could look like offensively), I decided to feel good about this particular statement that coach Beamer made about his offense in 2021: “You come out of spring practice and say, ‘Know what? Maybe we don’t quite have the personnel to do that right now,’ or, ‘Maybe there are some things we didn’t think we’d major in’ that we got around our personnel and said, ‘In what we’re going to be with our offense this is something we certainly need to implement.’”

In other words, we’ll figure out what we do best based on the players we have (which might sound like a simple concept but is one that seemed to elude Gamecock offensive coordinators in recent seasons).

I wasn’t done deciding to feel good about things, either.

I also decided to feel good about this statement that Clayton White made about the 4-2-5 scheme he’s introducing to the Gamecock defense this year (White, Gray go in-depth on nickel position): “It’s a very multiple defense. It’s fun, and the guys love it.”

Since fun did not seem to be something the Gamecock defense was having at any point in 2020, even a whiff of it seems encouraging at this moment.

Look, we’ll take what we can get.

And that’s the beauty of August. We can take what we can get.

The games haven’t started yet, and we’re still getting to know the staff and the new players, and the honeymoon vibes are strong and seductive, and football is back and the firehose of information is flowing.

Let it gush.

Tell me what you’re focusing on in your August Practice Studies this year by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

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