Scott Davis: Queen City Quicksand

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Scott has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. His columns appear on Gamecock Central each Monday during football season and other times throughout the year.

Late on Saturday afternoon, I drove maniacally through the streets of Buckhead, attempting to summon a flicker of road rage on a gray, rainy Atlanta day.

I was playing the part of Angry Gamecock Fan to a tee – I’d just watched South Carolina’s football team meekly surrender to a mediocre Virginia team in the Belk Bowl, and I figured I’d take the car out for a potentially life-threatening spin to unleash the anger that surely bubbled inside me (didn’t it?).

I did precisely what was expected of me.

I glared at other drivers.

I raced nearby cars to the next traffic light for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

And I even turned the radio dial, inevitably, to SiriusXM’s XL Liquid Metal channel, where I blasted Metallica’s rage anthem “Battery” at decibels previously unknown to the natural world (Sample Lyrics: “Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me! CANNOT STOP THE BATTERY!!!”)

There was only one problem.

I wasn’t particularly angry. Or frustrated. Or even antsy.

The Gamecocks had lost by the ludicrously pathetic score of 28-0 to a team that, quite simply, isn’t very good, and my overall feeling was: I’ve seen this before. Many, many, many times. And I’ll see it again.

The 2018 season had sputtered and wheezed to a halt, USC’s record stood at 7-6, and I tried to be disappointed about it and found I couldn’t do it.

That’s because this is exactly what I’ve come to expect South Carolina football to look like.

For what seems like decades now, most Gamecock seasons typically wind up somewhere in the vicinity of 7-5 at year’s end, as the team advances to a bowl game they don’t particularly want to be in and the coaching staff recruits just well enough to go 7-5 or thereabouts the following year. Here and there are some seasons that are uglier than others (like whatever that 3-9 debacle was in 2015) and some that are better than others (Steve Spurrier’s mildly shocking run to three consecutive 11-win campaigns), but mostly South Carolina is and has been a 7-5 program in every respect.

Those Spurrier glory years were bookended by a bunch of 7-5-ish seasons under the Ball Coach and Lou Holtz before him, and that’s right where Will Muschamp and Company have kept the program running at a steady, consistent, never-ending and ultimately numbing clip. South Carolina football at this point is the sports equivalent to the film career of Nicolas Cage – occasionally it’s so bad it’s good, once in a blue moon it hints at excellence and causes you to wonder about what might have been, but mostly it’s just somewhere in that vast, forgettable middle.

Spectacularly unmemorable Gamecock seasons pile up like Cage’s “National Treasure” and “Ghost Rider” sequels, and we struggle to recall the murky details of them after they’re over.

I can’t remember a thing about Cage’s late 2000s movie “Drive Angry,” just as I can’t remember much about the 2007 or 2008 South Carolina seasons (or the 2016 South Carolina season, for that matter).

The Gamecocks constructed yet another monument to emphatic, endless mediocrity in 2018, and as USC’s season sank on Saturday, the Queen City’s Bank of America Stadium turf began to resemble so much quicksand. It felt like a place we’d been before and a place where perhaps we’d always remain.

I then tried to Drive Angry.

But I couldn’t. After all, I’d seen this movie a thousand times.

And I’d forget it just as quickly as I did all the others.

Deebo Samuel – The Gamecocks’ best player wisely declined to come anywhere within the neighborhood of suiting up for a meaningless Belk Bowl, and in his absence, Carolina’s offense disappeared into the void…which only highlighted just how much Samuel meant to the team. Remember when Gamecock fans (like me) talked themselves into being excited about only losing to Clemson by three touchdowns because the offense posted eye-popping numbers in that game? I don’t either.

Bryson Allen-Williams – The fifth-year defender had five tackles in his final showing as a Gamecock, and though his career never approached the superstardom we may have expected back when Nick Saban was recruiting him to Tuscaloosa, he was a steady, reliable presence through a coaching change, position switches, injuries and other assorted trauma. He did what he always does when this game was over: He thanked USC fans and promised to attack his future with “Gamecock pride.” Thanks for everything, BAW.

South Carolina’s Sudden, Swift and Vaguely Shocking Offensive Free Fall – After lighting up one of the best defenses in America in the rivalry game against Clemson, the Gamecock offense trudged through the next week’s game against dreadful Akron, failing to move the ball with any consistency at all in the second half of that lethargic contest. But nothing could have prepared us for the unit’s ineptitude in the bowl game, when USC was shut out for the first time in a dozen years by…well, a Virginia team that also entered the game at 7-5.

Quarterback Jake Bentley – whose brilliance against Clemson set so many thousands of Gamecock hearts aflutter – suffered through one of his worst days in garnet and black at the Belk Bowl, with a 17-for-39, zero-touchdown, two-interception day that actually felt worse than the stats indicate. Bentley seemed to have forever silenced any lingering chatter about a quarterback controversy back on the Clemson turf in November, only to fire it right back up in Charlotte on Saturday. Speaking of the offense, let’s be sure to sling a Deflator to…

Having So Little Faith in Your Running Game and Offensive Line That You Felt the Need to Call a Passing Play on Fourth-and-Three Inches Against an Undersized Virginia Defensive Line – It set the tone early, and it was ugly. Facing fourth-and-millimeters near midfield in its first offensive series of the game, South Carolina declined to call a quarterback sneak or even an up-the-gut run, and instead rolled out Jake Bentley, whose pass to Rico Dowdle fell incomplete and sent Virginia’s sideline into grotesque celebratory gyrations. Sadly, I understood the seemingly incomprehensible decision – the Gamecocks had failed to convert similar short-yardage attempts on running plays all season. Indeed, just a few series after the aforementioned play, Gamecock running back Ty’Son Williams couldn’t grind for a first down on third-and-half-a-yard, forcing a South Carolina punt. While we’re here, let’s don’t forget to pass a Deflated Ball to…

The Running Back-By-Committee Thing – Either there’s no running back on the current roster who is capable of seizing the mantle as the Gamecocks’ bell cow, or the coaching staff just hasn’t figured out how to successfully rotate the running backs, but either way, one thing is powerfully clear: Attempting to piece together a type of four-headed monster with backs Dowdle, Williams, A.J. Turner and Mon Denson hasn’t succeeded and doesn’t look like it’s going to any time soon. The Gamecocks rushed for a comical 43 yards on 19 attempts, with Dowdle “leading” the group’s efforts by running for 21 yards on six carries. It’s no secret that South Carolina’s best offensive performance since the Steve Spurrier Era came in Clemson when the Gamecocks abandoned the running game entirely. If USC isn’t planning on making an all-out push for an elite running back in the near future, it might be time to reconsider. Where have you gone, Marcus Lattimore?

The College Football Playoff Continuing to Be as Interesting as Most Nic Cage Movies – In other news, Clemson and Alabama will meet for the fourth (400th?) consecutive year in the College Football Playoff, with three of those contests being for the national title itself. Every year we see a team that most of us don’t particularly believe needs to be there (Notre Dame this year, Oklahoma almost every year) wander into the Playoff and get waxed. And yet it’s not like there are a ton of other deserving candidates for filling out the Playoff spots, either. While there have certainly been some exciting individual games under the Playoff system (including the Bama-Clemson matchups and last year’s championship game between the Tide and Georgia), the system ultimately feels broken to me. And I don’t know how to fix it. Meanwhile, the many other also-ran bowl games have always been relatively meaningless, but they seem even more pointless than ever now. I’m not sure where this sport’s headed. I just know that, for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem nearly as compelling to me as it once did.

Me for Trying to Keep This Nic Cage Comparison Going Throughout This Entire Column – When you look at Cage’s strange career, it becomes increasingly obvious that his truly terrible, truly despicably awful moments – his “so bad it’s good” movies – have had the odd effect of actually building interest in him. While the vast majority of Cage’s work is utterly unmemorable, his dreadful performances live on into infinity, almost enjoyably so. I recently re-watched Cage’s preposterously bad “The Wicker Man” solely because I enjoy its awfulness, while I would never, ever re-watch forgettable Cage mediocrities like “Captain Correlli’s Mandolin,” “Lord of War” or “The Weather Man.” Here, I defy you to look away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo

I guess what I’m saying is, in a strange, indescribable way, I think seasons like Steve Spurrier’s final campaign – the 3-9 debacle that ended with him surrendering at midseason – can sometimes be more satisfying and of greater service to the program than an endless chain of humdrum 7-5 years. When a season goes remarkably, horrifically wrong, there’s a crackling energy surrounding the program, an overwhelming desire to make things better. But never-ending mediocrity – year after year after ever-loving year of it – has a kind of hypnotic effect. Its consistency puts you to sleep. You aren’t angry, you aren’t sad, you aren’t happy, you neither desire change nor enjoy the present. You just simply exist, and keep existing.

I don’t know the solution. You probably don’t either.

I just know that merely existing provides us with little to remember, little to hate, little to savor, little to love.

Welcome to 2019. It feels a lot like 2018, doesn’t it?