Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. You can reach Scott at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

As the purplish glow of evening settled in and a soothing California breeze brushed across my face, I looked up at a flickering TV above me and saw a surprise.

Tennessee was leading Georgia.

In the sport of football.

This wouldn’t have been shocking in 2005. But in 2019, it felt like the gentle rumblings of a mild earthquake – the once-proud, now pathetically hapless Vols attempting to make a last stand inside the concrete walls of Neyland Stadium.

And how did I feel inside, watching a potential earthquake unfold?

Absolutely nothing.

And I couldn’t have been happier about it.

I’d attained utter and complete Bye Week Nirvana, the final stage of happiness that a jaded college football fan who has seen too much pain and sorrow can enter.

Bye Week Bliss comes almost yearly to South Carolina Gamecock fans who’ve watched yet another season start the slow fadeout to extinction, and it always seems to arrive just at the moment when most of us are allowing the old, angry, sad thoughts to percolate. Namely, these thoughts:

Do I really need to keep paying attention to this sport? I mean, isn’t this college football thing a little too much pain and not enough gain? Do I still care? What am I doing here?

The cure to what ails us, oddly, is watching a full Saturday’s worth of football games that we don’t care about. Then we can at last breathe deeply, release the tension that has been mounting for weeks, unlock our hearts and souls and remember that, after everything, this sport is still just about the most fun thing we’re associated with on a regular basis.

I was out in Southern California for a wedding, and with the quaint charms of downtown Santa Barbara and the majesty of the Pacific Ocean filling my view, I still found myself drifting towards a TV in the corner of the reception area, checking in on SEC World and a game that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

It lasted for about five seconds before Georgia began its inevitable surge towards the expected blowout, but for a moment or two the Vols seemed like the Vols again, and Rocky Top was blaring, and those ridiculous orange-clad dorks were hollering their ancient anthem into the mountain air, and sleepy old Smokey was howling on the sidelines, and I was transported several time zones back East into the madness and fury of Southeastern Conference football.

I felt no anxiety whatsoever when, minutes later, UGA took the game back over. Nor did a single shred of sadness or empathy for Tennessee’s fans enter my mind when the Dawgs won by multiple touchdowns.

No, I was as blank and emotionless as a department store mannequin. And it was a beautiful thing.

I just loved football at that moment.

I didn’t hate it, too.

And that’s the feeling I’m not accustomed to as a South Carolina fan: Loving the game without also hating it.

Is it even possible to love the game without hating it, too? Do I even want it to be?

Watching Without Caring

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my old USC roommate – like me, a lifer in this Gamecock sports drama. At this point, we’re like cast members in a decades-old soap opera – one whose ratings have declined and whose stars have aged – that inexplicably still limps along on your television screen forever without being canceled.

“I was talking to a guy about the NFL the other day who lives in St. Louis,” he was telling me with an alarming amount of excitement. After the Rams moved back to Los Angeles, this man found himself without a rooting interest in any NFL team.

“Did you pick another team to follow?” my buddy asked him, wondering if it might actually be possible to attach yourself to another team at random.

The man explained that he hadn’t. He just watched the games every Sunday without any care or concern about who won or lost. There was no angst, no high blood pressure, no cursing, nothing.

“I just love watching the games,” the guy told him. “It’s awesome.”

I was a little jealous.

Wouldn’t that be the ideal way to enjoy this sport? No attachments, no heartbreak, no wasted days that drift by where you realize you’ve done nothing but sit around and feel sorry for yourself because your football team lost.

On Saturday while getting dressed in our hotel room, I happened upon the Miami-Virginia Tech game and ended up stopping what I was doing and sitting down in front of the television as the bizarre ending unfolded. Miami had turned the football over an astonishing five times, had missed a critical extra point, had given up a backbreaking touchdown to the Hokies in the waning minutes, and still had the football inside the Tech 10-yard-line with a chance to tie the game in its last seconds.

In the end, the ‘Canes failed and lost a heartbreaker, I felt absolutely nothing whatsoever, and I enjoyed the moment immensely.

In a perfect world, this would seem to be the very best way to watch football.

You let the games do what they do, watch them go haywire and crazy, enjoy the resilience and spirit of everyone involved, smile at the sight of joyous or grieving fans, and when it’s all over, you’re happy you got to be a part of it and admire the effort the two teams gave.

On Bye Weeks, I get to take part in this Perfect World Football Universe. And for a Saturday or two per year, it seems to be exactly what I need. I emerge from Bye Week Bliss as a rested, rejuvenated and content man, with a rebuilt spirit and a healthy perspective.

There’s only one thing missing: Everything.

Sunday morning, I woke up early and went for a walk along the rocky cliffs of the Pacific. The sun was rising over the ocean. I’d see two people get married today, start a new life together, confirm for one and all their everlasting love.

And I knew, listening to those crashing waves, that true love must always also include pain.

It must include anxiety, feeling sorry for yourself, cursing, crying, laughing, wondering if anything will ever get better, an undying hope that anything and everything is possible.

Love is not love unless it includes everything.

If you love the game and the team and the school and the other fans like you who love it all, too, then you have to sign up for everything. It is the only way. It has always been the only way.

It was always this way. It will always be this way.

Bye Weeks are just vacation, just the honeymoon.

We have to come home to real life for the real love to begin.

Love encompasses 4-8 seasons and 11-2 seasons and everything in between.

And yes, it is possible for you to watch this game without love in your heart.

But I choose not to.

On the Question of Whether October Weddings Should Be Allowed

Right now, you’re all wondering the same thing: How did you manage to find yourself at a wedding during college football season?

Believe me, I was wondering the exact same thing (sometimes when you’re married to another human being, you find yourself in unexpected places and aren’t sure how you wound up there and if you’ll ever come back).

Let me say this in the interest of full disclosure: I am opposed to October weddings as a general rule. I’m also opposed to September weddings as well as November weddings.

Don’t get me wrong – October and November are fabulous months of the year, probably the very best months of the year. If you wanted to get married at a time with the best chance for great weather and an overall vibe of happiness and joy, this would indeed be the time to do it.

But there’s that football thing.

Which doesn’t matter at all if you’re a sane, well-adjusted human being who is aware that the game of football exists and takes place in the months of September, October and November, but who doesn’t make life decisions based on football’s place on the calendar.

As an insane person who does make life decisions that revolve around football, I often find myself struggling to cope in a sane and rational world that insists on going on without me.

Many of you are like me: Hovering around the margins at wedding receptions and family reunions and birthday parties throughout the fall, stealing glances at TVs located somewhere private, wandering off to look at your phone. We’re a strange group of weirdos and outcasts bound together by this addiction we have.

This time it worked out perfectly for me: I had just a single wedding to attend this fall, and it was during South Carolina’s Bye Week (at a time when I was all too happy to step away from the Gamecock merry-go-round for a few days).

Other years, it’s a crapshoot and a minefield out there.

But you learn how to make it work.

Making it work: That’s what love is. Right?

I fly back today to the state of Georgia, the state where as it happens the South Carolina Gamecocks will next play football – this Saturday in Athens.

I’m sure that for three hours this Saturday I will feel everything – rage, sadness, hope, love.

I would not have it any other way.