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, Nov. 12, 2021.

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

There are four homes that fly Florida Gators flags from their front porches along the route I usually take for my morning walks in suburban Atlanta.

I know this because I counted them all on Monday morning.

I was wearing my favorite Gamecock T-shirt in the wake of South Carolina’s stunning 40-17 rout of Florida when I hit the streets to start the week. It’s a shirt I’ve had for years, the kind that is soft and rests easy on the body from heavy usage, and it features a Gamecock logo smack-dab inside the geographic outline of the state of South Carolina. Wearing it allows me to express pride in my school and my state at the same time – two birds, one stone.

I’ve noticed the Gator flags before, but at some point they receded into the background to take space as part of the visual tapestry that makes up my daily life here in Deep Suburbia alongside the SUVs and backyard firepits and Big Green Eggs. Eventually, I stopped seeing them at all.

Monday, they practically sobbed out of the void, crying out to be noticed. And notice them I did – they were flopping limply in a dull breeze, nearly as motionless as Florida’s offense had been for much of Saturday night in Williams-Brice Stadium.

Winning feels good. I’d forgotten how much it does.

I’ll freely admit that I couldn’t help smiling as I strode past those flags Monday. It was a ridiculous scene: Me in a Gamecock shirt, prancing past the homes of Florida alums who’d likely spent the weekend wondering what to do about Dan Mullen. I hoped someone was staring sadly out at the street from those homes, watching me skip and frolic by. What can I tell you, I’m a smug, petty sports fan.

And that’s just the thing – fans get to be smug and petty.

We get to be satisfied with big wins.

After all, no one’s expecting us to go out there and do it all over again just a week later.

Players and coaches, on the other hand, get about 12 hours or so to enjoy themselves after a memorable victory. And then we expect them to pretend it never happened.

I’ve been watching sports for more than four decades now, and I’ve adopted all the cliches and mottos and maxims so thoroughly at this point that they’ve almost been imprinted upon my body: “Keep playing until the whistle blows.” “It’s not over until it’s over.”

And most importantly, “Don’t let the last game affect the next game.”

Those are words we’ve heard all of our lives.

But as I walked past those Florida flags on Monday morning, I finally realized after all these years how difficult that task must be for a team under pressure.

Even when you feel satisfaction, you have to find a way to stay unsatisfied.

And that’s the task for South Carolina today: Be unsatisfied. At all costs.

Most of us understood the steepness of the hill that first-year head coach Shane Beamer would be climbing in 2021. This was a jagged, unforgiving rock-face whose incline shot straight up into high altitude.

We got it. At least we said we did, most of us, back during the dog days of August practice.

We knew Beamer was attempting to drag the program out of a dungeon, and we’d be patient, by God.

Get us a couple of wins, play hard every single week, try not to get embarrassed, have some fun out there, and execute a brand of football that is compelling and intriguing enough to keep recruits excited – this is what we were thinking in August.

And after the team scratched and clawed its way to an up-and-down 4-4 heading into the Bye Week, most of us felt like things were moving forward at a fairly predictable clip. The program wasn’t ahead of schedule, certainly, but it wasn’t 1,000 miles behind it, either. Things were what they were. If we could finish out the season without dropping into a black hole, there’d be reason enough to look forward to 2022 and beyond.

Then the Gamecocks rocked Florida like a hurricane.

And now, with five wins in the can and a heretofore underwhelming Missouri looming this Saturday afternoon, fans like me are starting to have visions of sugarplum bowl games dancing in our heads. Is this dangerous?

Even if South Carolina doesn’t win again in 2021, the perception surrounding Beamer’s program has probably now been slotted at “slightly ahead of schedule,” but should the Gamecocks beat Missouri and wind up playing a 13th game somewhere late in December?

At that point, we might even be in Full-Fledged Resurrection Mode. It’s hard not to let our souls tingle at such a prospect.

Let’s face it, “Join the Resurrection!” is a pretty solid tagline when you’re pitching recruits on playing time and selling the family atmosphere in Columbia this winter.

But if the resurrection is coming to pass, that Florida win must pass, too (good as it may have felt at the deepest possible level).

The pathway to Resurrection involves destroying Satisfaction.

So stay unsatisfied, boys.

Even if the rest of us can’t.

If you missed my celebratory “I love everybody!” column from the Florida game, “The Signature Solution,” you’ll want to go ahead and get into that before taking another step further Scott Davis: The Signature Solution.

I saw the Rolling Stones live at Williams-Brice Stadium when I was a graduate student at the University of South Carolina. Here are the Stones playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” live in front of roughly 15 million people in Brazil The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. RIP, Charlie Watts.

Just because I’m a smug, petty sports fan, I feel like now would be a wonderful time to run back that extraordinary clip of Florida players blocking each other back in 2013 Gator teammates blocking each other vs Georgia Southern. I could watch this every day.

Get ready for Saturday by taking 77 seconds and reliving the immortal Connor Shaw Game vs. Missouri in 2013 right here South Carolina vs Missouri Football Highlights.

Those Connor Shaw teams always seemed to stay hungry and unsatisfied no matter how many Signature Wins piled up. Let’s hope the 2021 Gamecocks are ready to do the same.

Tell me how you’re staying unsatisfied after the Gamecocks dismantled Florida by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

To sign up for Scott's weekly newsletter, click here.

Gamecock Central is introducing a free text alert service later this year.

Text USC to 877-GO-COCKS (877-46-26257) to sign up.

By texting this number, you agree to receive promotional messages sent via an autodialer, and this agreement isn’t a condition of any purchase. I also agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You'll receive approx. four messages/month. Message & Data rates may apply. To unsubscribe, text STOP to 8774626257.