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.

When your favorite team’s football season goes bad, the rest of the world seems to go bad along with it.

South Carolina unexpectedly nosedives against the UNC Tar Heels in Charlotte and all of the sudden, a lethal hurricane is bearing down in the vicinity of the SC coast – and that can’t be a coincidence, can it?

As much as you try to ignore what happened in Game One, the news marches on in the week that follows.

Senior quarterback Jake Bentley is injured for the foreseeable future, then will miss the season. Former Gamecock players are dogging the program on Twitter (a storyline I somehow managed to learn about despite deleting my Twitter account last fall). Gamecock recruits are re-thinking their pledges. Negativity piles up, life’s unfair and on and on it goes.

Just a week into the college football season, I found myself waking up on Saturday and thinking, “I can’t wait to NOT turn on College GameDay this morning.”

I didn’t want to hear Herbstreit and Howard chuckling about the South Carolina Gamecocks, or gushing about the Clemson Tigers, or raving about this team or that team looking fantastic in the first week out there. If there was raving or gushing involved, I wanted no part of it. When I’m not fantastic, I don’t want to hear about other people who are fantastic.

You look forward to football season all year long – months and months of waiting – and then it gets here and you immediately try to run away from it as fast as you can.

So it probably goes without saying that I needed Saturday in the worst way.

I needed to see young guys running around and attacking the game with enthusiasm and passion. I needed to see television shots of Gamecock fans who actually appeared to be smiling and laughing. I needed offensive records to be broken. I needed 1980s uniforms. I needed the opponent to be Charleston Southern.

All those things happened along the way to a 72-10 dismantling of an overwhelmed Charleston Southern on Saturday. True freshman Ryan Hilinski stepped in at quarterback and completed his first twelve passes, eventually winding up with 24 completions, 282 yards, two touchdowns and a nifty bomb to a streaking Bryan Edwards.

Just about every running back in a Gamecock uniform stockpiled yards against the poor Buccaneers, who gave up a staggering 775 total yards to a USC team that couldn’t find a way to fall forward for positive millimeters last week against UNC.

After a tight, conservative, passionless, unenthused and joy-free day in Charlotte, the Gamecocks (particularly the youngsters) ran around the field with child-like exuberance – there were more high-fives and backslaps than at a YMCA gym during a church league basketball tournament. It was like South Carolina hit the reset button on everything: the season ahead, the mode of attacking its opponents, and the way all of us viewed the team in three short hours. The heavy weight hovering over the program seemed to wilt away in the noontime heat.

So many good things happened it was hard to keep my head from spinning into the clouds: An excited and heroic Hilinski, consistent penetration by the Gamecock defensive front and interceptions by Gamecock defensive backs, actual passes downfield directed towards actual wide receivers instead of to running backs standing in the backfield, Dakereon Joyner doing Dakereon things. Were these truly signs of life?

Still, I declined to allow my head to spin into the clouds for the following reason: Charleston Southern.

Now that we mentioned them, let’s go ahead and ask the question we’re all wondering about.

Well, is it?

If I may, let me pass out a few final scores from around college football this week:

Alabama 62-New Mexico State 10; Georgia 63-Murray State 17; Oklahoma 70-South Dakota 14; Oregon 77-Nevada 6; Wisconsin 61-Central Michigan 0; Michigan State 51-Western Michigan 17; Washington State 59-Northern Colorado 17.

So it’s clear that beating the ever-loving pants off a lesser opponent isn’t terribly hard to do in college football. Even more troubling, every single losing team listed above is a couple of galaxies better than Charleston Southern.

It’s not even unheard-of for a true freshman to step in at quarterback and make things happen against an also-ran. I mean, I actually spent a large portion of a column a few years ago singing praises to the sparkplug play of Lorenzo Nunez (remember him?) at quarterback.

Still, South Carolina offenses don’t set school records in yards very often. South Carolina offenses under Will Muschamp never set school records in, well, anything. South Carolina offenses don’t score 70-something points, like, ever. True freshmen quarterbacks rarely complete their first 12 passes from scrimmage in their first game as a starter (even if many of those passes are short screens). And again: 775 yards, dude. Seven seven five.

The verdict: I’m not sure if it’s OK for us to be excited about this game. But we shouldn’t NOT be excited about it, either. Does that make sense?

Ultimately, I still don’t think we know what we’re getting this season, the fate of the program still hangs in the balance, and I’m more confused than ever. Oh, and the Alabama Crimson Tide are on their way to Columbia next Saturday, so welcome to SEC football, my friends.

I think I need a reset from the reset.

Is there any doubt who our first game balls go to? It’s got to be…

Freshmen – Ryan Hilinski stepped out of the halls of a California high school, walked on to the Williams-Brice turf Saturday and looked like a quarterback who’s ready to start games in the SEC. While he stood on the sidelines for a breather, redshirt freshman Dakereon Joyner took over at QB and rolled down the field for a rushing touchdown. Meanwhile, true freshman running back Kevin Harris rushed for 147 yards and a stunning three touchdowns. Most impressively, the youngsters looked and felt like leaders out there. They injected a refreshing adrenaline shot into what had been a lifeless and grim collection of football players in Charlotte. There’s a time for saavy, seasoned veteran poise, and there’s a time for young folks to have fun. Saturday was fun time. Which is why we’ll sling a game ball to…

Ryan Hilinski’s Wild Sideline Celebration During Joyner’s Touchdown – Hilinski saved his most memorable celebration to commemorate his teammate and fellow quarterback Dakereon Joyner, who had entered the game for a spell at quarterback and promptly carried the ball down the field and into the end zone. It seemed to be really important for Hilinski to let us all know he supported his teammate. And why not? There’s room for both quarterbacks to add value to this Gamecock offense, and now that Bentley is officially out for the season, South Carolina will surely need both to shine if the team will have any opportunity to play in a bowl game this winter.

The 1980s – I was surprised so many fans took to social media and message boards to talk up the vintage ‘80s throwbacks that South Carolina wore during the Charleston Southern game. I mean, I thought I’d already established that this was a sizzling hot look when I penned this love song to these uniforms a few weeks ago. (*link to newsletter “The Inescapable ‘80s*) Would I be absolutely fine if these became USC’s permanent football uniforms? Yes. Yes, I would. While we’re here, there are two kinds of South Carolina fans: 1. Fans who love to talk about uniforms, color schemes, logos, helmets, striping and other things that have nothing to do with winning or losing football games; and 2. Fans who love to talk about how much they hate fans who care about uniforms. I’m firmly in Camp #1. Uniform discussions are part of why sports are so much fun to follow, and the folks who legitimately seem angry by these discussions perplex me so deeply that I can’t even really talk about them without my hair falling out.

The Sport of College Football – Just when I think college football is trying to kill me, along comes a day like this past Saturday. First, the Gamecocks won and did so impressively. Then, two different games were so compelling that they reminded me why I started caring about the sport in the first place. Army and Michigan wound up in overtime, with West Point narrowly missing out on a monumental upset. Then the overtime Colorado-Nebraska passion play passed the ultimate test for games that have entered the Hall of Fame: It caused the announcing team who was calling the game to turn into fans. As Colorado stormed back against the Cornhuskers, the Fox announcers started saying things to each other like “Can you believe this?” and “Man, this is why I love college football right here. Wow.” It was almost as though they’d lost the ability to call the game with neutral dispassion and had morphed into a couple of guys in the stands who were losing their minds like the rest of us. I love when that happens.

Charleston Southern – Right team at the right time, man. Thanks, Buccos.

Noon Games and 100 Degree Heat – I give these a Deflated Ball every September, and I’ll continue doing it for as long as I’m writing this column. Shout out to anyone who stepped into the furnace and actually hung around for all four quarters.

The Sadness of the Circle of Life in College Football – I don’t know if Jake Bentley will ever take a snap as South Carolina’s quarterback again. Especially now that he’s officially been ruled out for the year after deciding to have surgery for a Lisfranc injury. I just know that I feel for him and his family – a group of people that I don’t know personally, but feel like I do because I’ve spent every autumn Saturday with them for four years. Just a few years ago, many of us were excitedly heralding Bentley’s arrival on the scene in much the same way we’re trumpeting Hilinski’s emergence today. Don’t forget just how popular Bentley was for a brief moment when he too was a freshman. Here’s what I said about him in the aftermath of South Carolina’s win against Tennessee in 2016, when I wrote: “Bentley may not have set the stat sheet on fire, but he showed an astonishing amount of poise as a true freshman in his first start against an SEC opponent. The Vols made the wise decision to blitz the youngster relentlessly, hit him in the mouth and see if he could respond. And despite the full-on beatdown he took, there he was, standing in the pocket, looking for open receivers and often finding them even in the tightest of coverages. He also seemed to know exactly when it was time for him to close up shop and scamper on his own for a first down (shades of the almighty Connor Shaw). He’s going to be swamped on campus this week by well-wishers and fans. It’s going to happen. I was attending USC in 1992 (yes, I’m fully aware this was 17,000 years ago) when true freshman Steve Taneyhill took the reins of an 0-5 team and led them to five wins in six games. He became an instant celebrity, then felt a bit of a backlash when the team struggled the following year. The same emotional drama happened with Todd Ellis and the fan base, too – a storyline that oddly continues to play itself out today with Ellis’ tenure as play-by-play announcer. We’ll see how Bentley handles it all. I think I already know how he will, and I’m excited to see it.” You can read the entire column here.

So here we are four seasons later, with Bentley exiting stage left, Hilinski taking the field to unbridled praise, and it’s the circle of life. I get it – this happens all the time in this game, over and over and over again. Someone arrives as someone leaves. But this time it’s harder to gloss over the age-old story, because I know that Jake Bentley (a South Carolina kid) cared deeply about the being QB1 at the University of South Carolina. He seemed to have been born to be exactly that. That he became South Carolina’s starting quarterback seemed preordained, that it ended this way did not. I don’t how to feel any other way about this but sad.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the young, fresh and suddenly potent Gamecocks were anything but sad on Saturday. They rejuvenated themselves. They may have rejuvenated the rest of their season. And they certainly rejuvenated old, weary Gamecock fans like me.

Keep smiling, boys.

You’ll need it for the weeks to come.