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Scott Davis: Old Kentucky Groan

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, Sept. 24, 2021.

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

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We all have our trouble spots.

Some people fall apart when they’re stuck in traffic. Some people lose the will to live when they’re around their in-laws. Some people scream at neighbors who play music too loud in their cars.

Me?

I handle football games against the University of Kentucky poorly.

Always have.

During South Carolina’s first season as a member of the Southeastern Conference way back in 1992, I fidgeted for three straight hours while watching the Gamecocks lose to Kentucky on a tiny television screen in my USC dorm room. For God’s sake, I can still remember the score – 13 to freaking 9, in one of the ugliest football games I’ve ever had the displeasure to experience.

I may have thrown a TV remote against a wall, may have spent the afternoon sulking alone, and perhaps even wandered the Horseshoe in a failing effort to find myself. It’s been all downhill from there.

It’s safe to say that my worst moments as a South Carolina fan have come whenever the Gamecocks have found themselves on the losing end of a game against the Wildcats of Lexington. And in recent years, they’ve been finding themselves there again and again. At this point, I don’t even watch the Kentucky Derby anymore, and I may swear off Kentucky Fried Chicken if things don’t improve. My old Kentucky home is haunted.

Arguably my most yearning, despondent, bitter, soul-searching column ever for Gamecock Central was written in the wake of South Carolina’s 2017 loss to Kentucky in an unfortunate “Blackout Game” at Williams-Brice. (Feel like descending into the void? Then by all means, please do enjoy my darkest column of all time. This thing should’ve come with a Parental Advisory warning).

I handle losses to Georgia with admirable stoicism. It’s been years since a Florida game tied me in knots. Sometimes the Tennessee game trips me up, but even those stopped flaying my guts into ribbons a couple of seasons ago.

Indeed, somewhere around a decade back, I matured into a warm-hearted, upbeat and stubbornly positive fan, and for the most part, I maintain that outlook (NOTE: We may want to add that my wife would perhaps quibble with this sunny assessment of my fanhood. Fortunately for all of us, she almost never reads my columns, and there’s a better chance of me starting at quarterback for South Carolina on Saturday night than her seeing what I’ve just written, so as far as anyone knows, I absolutely am a patient, ultra-optimistic Gamecock fan).

But there’s just something about losing to the Big Blue Crew that brings out the slasher movie villain in me. While we’re here, have you heard that South Carolina’s opponent this Saturday is none other than the Kentucky Wildcats?

In other words, hide the butcher knives.

Great Expectations

So how does this all make sense?

Why can I handle blowouts to Florida with easygoing resignation, but losses to Kentucky send me spiraling into cycles of rage, self-loathing and a reliance on gallows humor?

In college football, it’s always about feelings, about what we believe should happen, could happen and by God, will happen.

We’re an emotional bunch, we college football fans, prone to adolescent levels of angst and drama.

The simple fact is – whether I should or I shouldn’t – I just feel like the University of South Carolina should be beating the University of Kentucky in football on a regular basis. What can I tell you – when I see “Kentucky” on the schedule, I mentally make a “W” in my head. Sue me.

Does it matter to me that Kentucky fans probably feel the same way when they see “South Carolina” on the schedule? It doesn’t.

Sure, you’re going to lose a time or two to anybody every 10 years. It happens.

But the Gamecocks have lost six of their last seven to UK.

Six of seven.

It can’t happen. At least I’ve convinced myself that it can’t. Or that it shouldn’t. Or that the universe is in danger of spinning out into oblivion if it does.

There’s little reason for me to feel this way – after all, South Carolina hasn’t consistently pushed anyone around during its three decades in the SEC (unless we’re counting Vanderbilt as an SEC football program). We’re no one’s idea of a neighborhood football bully. The Gamecocks lead the overall series with Kentucky 18-13, but in recent years the Wildcats have often won these matchups in rather efficient, rather workmanlike fashion.

That might not be a problem for my sanity if Kentucky were competing for SEC championships annually. But while UK has gradually improved in coach Mark Stoops’ nine years at the helm in Lexington, they’ve still been largely an also-ran in the SEC East. Stoops has just a single winning record in league play, in 2018, and his overall record as a head coach in the SEC is a very un-Saban-like 25-42.

Am I crazy for thinking this is a game South Carolina should be winning on a routine basis?

Am I crazy for thinking six out of seven is hard to explain?

  Big Blue Blues  

Regardless of how we might feel the Gamecocks should be faring against Kentucky, in the cold, hard here and now, South Carolina is a decided underdog in its home matchup with the Wildcats on Saturday night.

Kentucky cruises into Columbia at 3-0, having just dispatched Chattanooga last week while South Carolina was falling flat in Athens (and if you missed my column, “Reality Bites,” from the game Between the Hedges, you can find it right here.) Let there be no doubt: Las Vegas likes Kentucky’s six-of-seven streak to become seven-of-eight.

Sometime soon, those types of expectations need to become the exception rather than the norm. First-year Gamecock coach Shane Beamer may have been hired to carry the program towards championships and elite bowl berths, but before that can happen, he and his staff must first lift their program back above that lower-middle-class tier of the SEC – the realm of the Kentuckys and Missouris and Arkansas and Mississippi States.

And whether it happens this year or next year or somewhere down the road, it will have to happen eventually if this stretch of South Carolina football is to be remembered fondly.

As for me, I’ve finally learned that my feelings don’t mean much when it comes to South Carolina-Kentucky. So no matter what goes down in Williams-Brice on Saturday, I’m going to be OK. I’ll be fine, don’t you worry.

This time I’m ready. I promise.

But let’s still hide the butcher knives just in case.

Tell me how you’re feeling about Saturday night and let me know which games on the schedule drive you the craziest by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

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

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