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, Oct. 22, 2021.

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

Does it feel like the South Carolina-Texas A&M series has been at all competitive?

I didn’t think so.

In fact, I’d planned to write a rousing column leading up to Saturday night’s game in College Station, pointing out how South Carolina’s football program could never truly consider itself a member in good standing of the Southeastern Conference as long as it was getting blown off the field each year by the Aggies.

I’d planned to rant, to rave, to read the riot act. Unless and until the Gamecocks closed the gap on the scoreboard and on the recruiting trail against Texas A&M, the program couldn’t fully consider itself moving forward: This was the argument I would be making, emphatically.

I hopped online to find the scores of each of the South Carolina-A&M games since the schools started competing in 2014, intending to list every gruesome, disgusting one of them. Each one would represent a blood-soaked slaughter of innocents – this would be an endless parade of massacres filled with unimaginable carnage. Then I started glancing at the final tallies.

There were some blowouts in there, no doubt about it. But some of these games actually looked like spirited, contested affairs…which shattered my mind into 10,000 tiny fragments, because I don’t ever recall the Gamecocks causing the Aggies to break a sweat after the opening kickoff.

The first game the two teams played at Williams-Brice Stadium was a 52-28 “behind the woodshed” spanking, notable for being the first sporting event that caused me to hurl my television remote across the room since my wife and I had moved into our new place in Atlanta (It’s always good to christen a new home, isn’t it?). After three consecutive 11-win seasons in Columbia, this was the first queasy-making sign that South Carolina was not who we thought they were. I clearly never recovered from gaining that knowledge.

The two most recent games in the series were also painful woodshed visitations: 30-6 in 2019 and (heaven preserve us) 48-3 last year.

In between those collapses were quite a few back-and-forth grinds, though. Do scores like 26-23, 24-17, 24-13 and 35-28 shock you? They shocked me.

That’s because in my mind and in my heart and in my soul, South Carolina just hasn’t been competitive when they’ve played Texas A&M. In my mind and in my heart and in my soul, the Aggies’ roster has been locked and loaded with five-star athletes, elite speedsters, redwood-sized linemen and bruising running backs who have toyed with the Gamecocks and left them looking puny, sluggish and overwhelmed.

In my mind and my heart and my soul, South Carolina still endured a canyon-wide gap in talent when facing upper-tier league foes, despite the Gamecocks competing in the SEC for three decades now. That’s the story that rolled on in my head every time I saw Texas A&M on the schedule, and it frustrated me to high heaven.

But my mind and my heart and my soul is not where the truth lies. Imagine that.

Before we go any further, let’s do go ahead and clear one thing up.

Under no circumstances am I suggesting that the Gamecocks are in the vicinity of the outskirts of the neighborhood of being on equal footing with Texas A&M. They’re not even in the same state as the vicinity of the outskirts of that neighborhood.

If we’re even contemplating calling this series competitive, then we’re using the term “competitive” mighty loosely. No matter the final scores, we may not lose sight of the reality that South Carolina is 0-7 against Texas A&M since the Aggies joined the league, and you can’t make a case that you’re competitive against anyone to whom you are winless.

Indeed, the last two games in this series have pointed towards a pair of programs going in markedly different directions. A&M’s trajectory under Jimbo Fisher is climbing, while we still don’t have the first idea where South Carolina is headed after the Gamecocks spent the last five years in the abyss.

But what I found striking when examining this series is how little the reality of it matches up with my memories of it. And it reminds me that what sports feels like to those of us experiencing it is often not what it actually is.

I don’t recall ever watching South Carolina play Texas A&M in football and thinking at any point that the Gamecock defense had a chance to even slow down the Aggie offense, which in my memory was a high-tech, wildly complicated, pass-heavy attack that featured 65-yard bombs and guys running 3.8-second 40s.

And yet many of the final scores across this series reflect fairly boring slugfests.

How is this possible? In my mind, the Aggies were averaging 73 points in their seven games against South Carolina. What has happened inside my brain that has transformed this series into something closer to Alabama vs. Jacksonville State than an undistinguished SEC battle? This is some sort of diabolical Sports Fan PTSD that hasn’t even been discovered yet, much less diagnosed.

I can remember specific play calls that infuriated me during random South Carolina games in the 1990s, but I’m honestly struggling to recall the Gamecocks even mounting a touchdown-scoring drive against Texas A&M. Those touchdowns occurred, though, whether I remember them or not.

Have I ever been nervous during a Texas A&M game, on pins and needles because South Carolina had a chance to eke out a win? Apparently so.

Who knew?

After surviving a surprisingly terrifying showdown with the Almighty Vanderbilt Commodores, South Carolina must now hit the road for a night game in College Station. God bless life in the SEC. If you missed my column, “Check Your Head,” from that wild Vandy game, then you can relive every unforgettable moment right here.

Former graduate assistant and current South Carolina quarterback Zeb Noland led that last-second comeback to put the Gamecocks on the board in Southeastern Conference play in 2021, and he’ll serve as the starter going forward after head coach Shane Beamer announced that Luke Doty would have season-ending surgery on his foot.

For his part, Noland is embracing his role as QB1 at an SEC school after stints at Iowa State and North Dakota State.

And for my part, I’ll be watching Saturday night’s game with an eye towards actually remembering what transpires for a change. Apparently, I’ve been pretending these games never happened.

Hopefully this time I won’t have to.

Let me know what your memories tell you about the South Carolina-Texas A&M series and pass along anything else on your mind 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.