Scott Davis: Flush It, My Friends

GamecockCentral.com columnist Scott Davis, who has followed USC sports for more than 30 years, provides commentary from the perspective of a Gamecocks fan. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @scdonfire.

Somewhere around the 13 minutes-and-something-seconds-left mark in the first quarter of South Carolina’s game against Mississippi State, it became fairly obvious that the Gamecocks weren’t going to go undefeated in football this season.

We knew that, of course.

We really knew that.

We knew that way back in January.

Look, the rest of America wasn’t sure we’d even win a game this season.

But fans are weird. They can understand that something is an undeniable fact and still try to believe it’s not true. They can see with their own eyes that the sky is blue, and hear everyone else around them proclaim that the sky is blue, and yet still find ways to hope that it’s green.

And until the games actually start, there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny particle somewhere deep inside your internal organs that is sitting there shouting to the rest of your body, “Hey, you never know. Maybe we’ll just start winning and keep winning!”

Rational or not, that voice won’t die until your team picks up its first loss of the season, as USC emphatically did on Saturday night to a team that lost to South Alabama a week ago. The Gamecocks were largely outclassed from the opening gun, getting pushed around on both lines of scrimmage, committing deeply unfortunate penalties, turning the football over with abandon and gleefully welcoming Mississippi State QB Nick Fitzgerald to rush for 47,000 yards in a terrifying reminder of the last few seasons of South Carolina defense.

So what do we do on a disappointing occasion like this?

Flush it.

Take this loss, walk it into the bathroom, toss it into the toilet and flush it.

Or at least pretend to.

ALSO: Inside the Commitment of OrTre Smith

It’s gone. It doesn’t exist. Pretend it happened in 1995, or never. It has nothing to do with you, your family, friends, dog or the human condition itself right in the here and now of 2016.

If you need to, stare into a mirror, remind yourself that this is the second – SECOND – game of the Will Muschamp Experience, and that there are going to be losses this season, and more losses, and perhaps even more losses.

It’s not a fun exercise, but it is a necessary one.

All of us knew this wasn’t going to be a championship season. We knew that.

And now it’s time to act accordingly.

I’ve said since roughly 2,000 B.C. that a phenomenal season would be winning six games and getting to a mediocre bowl in a mediocre city sponsored by a pizza chain, Breakstone’s sour cream or Duke’s mayonnaise. Whatever, dude. Just win as many games as you lose, preach to recruits that things are moving in the right direction and see what happens in 2017 and beyond.

Indeed, I was so focused on the six-win goal that I broke down the schedule half-a-second after it came out and tried to find six wins on there. I thought I’d done so. I thought we needed to win six of the seven games that involved Vanderbilt, Miss State, East Carolina, Kentucky, UMASS, Western Carolina and Missouri.

I get that Georgia, Tennessee and Texas A&M are at home, and anything can happen at home in the SEC, and I’ve never just accepted a loss before it happened, so let’s see what transpires and stuff.

Still, we haven’t matched up at all defensively against the Aggies since they joined the league, and I see no reason to believe we will this year. The Dawgs and the Vols appear to have more talent just about everywhere. Clemson and Florida on the road? In the words of Cee-Lo, “Forget you.”

So we needed to find six out of the other seven. Remember the scene in “Major League” where the grizzled manager tells the Indians exactly how many games they need to win the rest of the season to make the playoffs, using a vibrant visual aid to get the point across? If not, now you do:

That’s how I figured it: We need six wins. We have seven shots at it. Let’s take the dress off piece-by-piece and see where we are at the end of November.

Now one of those opportunities is gone. Now we need to run the table.

I haven’t given up on it yet.

And neither should you.

Game Balls

I still need a name for our weekly game ball give-out after the illustrious Pharoh Cooper’s departure. If there are any sponsors who want to come on board here and claim these things right now, let me know. (For the record, I enjoy Outback Steakhouse, Mello Yello and Muncho’s chips. This is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor, folks).

For this week, we’re calling them the “My In-Laws Are Fun to Watch South Carolina Games With” Games Balls, and those balls will be given to the following winners:

My In-Laws – I’ve expressed, ad nauseum, that my wife just hasn’t provided the support system I’ve needed during the last few disappointing Gamecock football seasons. She often scolds me for acting like an immature clown during games, openly shops at Publix during contests she feels confident we’ll lose and other egregious sins.

Fortunately her parents don’t feel the same way.

I zipped over to my hometown of Greenville to watch the game with her Mom and Dad on Saturday, and once it became clear that we weren’t going to even threaten to win this football game, they both looked as dejected as kids on the playground who don’t get invited into the cool clique. There was even some shouting involved.

I was happy about this because I need to be around people who care about Gamecock football as much as I do. Even though they were disappointed in the outcome, it made me feel better because I wasn’t alone. Thanks, guys.

My Dad for Valiantly Trying (and failing) to Send a “Glass Half Full” Text After the Game – After I made fun of my Dad for not sending his typical “these guys aren’t that bad, let’s hang in there” text after a close Vanderbilt win last week, he vowed he’d return to form following the Mississippi State game. Then we kicked the ball off, things quickly got weird and he immediately texted to let me know he couldn’t figure out a way to send a positive message this week. A few minutes passed. He couldn’t let it happen again. So he sent this: “At least we’re not OK State being beaten on the wrong ruling by an official” (referring to Oklahoma State’s miracle loss to Central Michigan on a bad call).

That’s why he’s my Dad.

Young People Acting Like Young People – When the Gamecocks finally showed signs of life on offense during the second half, many of the folks doing good things were young guys/new guys. They made some mistakes, too. That’s what young guys do. We’re going to take some lumps this season, so it’s hard for me to see any reason why we shouldn’t be giving these young dudes a chance to learn how to play and (hopefully) win in the SEC. Look, this club isn’t going 11-1, or even 8-4, and if that’s the case, you might as well let the kids play. The future is all kinds of now.

Mississippi State’s Fans for Being Super Passionate About a Game No One Cared About – After a crushing loss to South Alabama, you could have forgiven the Bulldog faithful if they’d taken a bye week for this game against a South Carolina team that went 3-9 last year. Instead, they showed up and hollered for four quarters, clanging cowbells to the point that I wanted to wander a country road looking for a cow to shoot, roast and eat. That’s what an SEC fan base should be all about. I hope we show up that way for East Carolina this Saturday.

Will Muschamp Looking Bereft and Straight-up Devastated on the Gamecock Sidelines – Say what you will, but Muschamp cared about this loss. He HATED it. You could see it all on his face: All that time we’ve spent working for the last year, everything we had to overcome, and this is what we’re looking at? I felt terrible for him. He cares. My man cares.

Deflated Balls

You can’t hand out Game Balls without also handing out Deflated Balls (well, technically you can, since I did so last week, but whatever), so we’ve got to toss a few deflators to the following:

Arm-Tackling – After looking “night and day”-level better on defense against Vandy, the Gamecocks wilted quickly against the Bulldogs, eventually sticking out arms, hands and even fingers in the hopes of bringing down Mississippi State’s players. In a bit of good news, Muschamp acknowledged the allergic reaction to wrapping up, stating after the game that “If you can’t tackle, you can’t play at South Carolina.”

Car Flags Flying on the Day After a Loss to a Less Than Mediocre Mississippi State – I live for the enthusiasm of Gamecock fans. I’ve spent much of my adult life praising it in this column. But when you get rolled up by a team that just lost to South Alabama, I’m not sure what statement you think you’re making by keeping the Gamecock car flags at full mast the day after the debacle. I went out to pick up some Bojangles’ biscuits on Sunday morning in Greenville and encountered not one, not two, but three cars with Gamecock flags flying during my 10-minute journey. Mystifying. I’m of the opinion that there’s a Car Flag Etiquette out there, and it’s as follows: 1. If you lose, go ahead and take down the flags right after you get back to the car unless you were a massive underdog and hung in valiantly. 2. If you won, fly them on the way home, then take them down. 3. If you won a huge, HUGE game (USC over Georgia for the SEC East title, for example), then maybe you can let them fly for a day or two, but ONLY for a day or two.

Losing to Miss State the week after they lost to South Alabama? Fold the flags up and save them for next week, and do it as quickly as you can.

East Carolina Beating N.C. State to Suddenly Make Next Week’s Game Look More Dangerous Than I Already Knew it Was – We need six wins. We had seven chances and one’s gone. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Gamecock Fans for Chalking Up MSU as a ‘W’ After they Lost to South Alabama – This happens every year. Somebody doesn’t “look particularly crisp” playing a team we all know they should beat. Gamecock fans take that performance and make the assumption that USC will certainly beat that team, then seem stunned when it doesn’t happen.

It was Game One. Miss State outplayed South Alabama for most of the game and were clearly more talented (yes, I watched it, since I watch every football game that flickers across a television set). They lost a game they shouldn’t have right at the end. It didn’t mean that the Gamecocks now had an automatic victory in Starkville.

And yet it seemed like our fans took that leap all week before Saturday. And after this week’s results? I can already hear it now: “Georgia barely beat Nicholls State. Clemson should’ve lost to Troy. That means we’ll beat them.”

Please don’t go there. I’ve seen 11-win USC teams need divine intervention to beat Wofford. Those outcomes have nothing to do with what’s going to happen when we play those teams. Act accordingly.

Act accordingly.

And flush everything from this week.

See you in Williams-Brice for ECU. Bring a cowbell, a pom pom, a loud voice and an angry attitude.