Scott Davis: Sunday Morning Coming Down
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.
“On a Sunday morning sidewalk, I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned, ‘cause there’s something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone….” - Johnny Cash, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
At the beginning of the second quarter of South Carolina’s humdrum 28-14 loss to Georgia on Sunday afternoon, something happened to me that has never happened in my many, many decades on this planet.
I dozed off during a South Carolina football game.
Really.
My wife was there to witness it and she heard honest-to-God snoring from my recliner, so there’s no way for me to deny it. I’m ashamed of this moment, won’t include it on my epitaph and hope it doesn’t find its way into my obituary down the road.
But it happened.
I missed Perry Orth tossing a backbreaking interception into double coverage. I missed the Dawgs taking the gift and quickly ushering themselves into the end zone to extend their lead to 14-0. I missed camera shots of frustrated Gamecock fans looking towards the heavens and wondering why they were born to be Gamecock fans. I missed a lot.
Important things were happening on Williams-Brice Stadium’s football field in a huge SEC game, and I couldn’t be bothered to, you know, be awake and stuff.
In my defense, it had been an eventful weekend. My old USC roommate and his family fled Hurricane Matthew’s rager through Charleston and hunkered down with us in Atlanta for a weekend-long Category Four Party. We ate to excess at roughly 14,000 different restaurants in the city. I may or may not have even used their visit to have five or six too many glasses of Knob Creek bourbon. It was a festive couple of days.
And by the time Sunday morning rolled around and our friends headed back to the Lowcountry, the Gamecocks’ delayed rivalry matchup against UGA had begun to take on a startlingly anticlimactic feel – something that would’ve seemed unthinkable just two seasons ago. There didn’t seem to be anything remotely interesting at stake, and even my flipping on the SEC Network at 2:30 felt rote and paint-by-numbers.
‘Dawgs-‘Cocks, in Williams-Brice! And my response was….zzzzzz?
I’m sorry to say that it was.
After a half season of watching South Carolina football in 2016, I can tell you with sincerity that there’s very little anyone can write or say about this team that is interesting, insightful or memorable. This team is emphatically who it is.
Pretty much everyone – including me – who writes about the Gameocks says the exact same things week after week: “They try hard. They’re undermanned and inexperienced. They have no depth. They give it a real go for a few quarters before inevitably wilting. They will not score points, ever, for any reason and under any circumstances.”
And that’s the extent of the story. South Carolina in 2016 is remarkably consistent and even downright boring in its badness.
It’s a strange place to be.
Last year’s USC football season had moments of spectacular ugliness – it was the most disappointing year of Gamecock football in my lifetime (yes, worse than the ‘90s) precisely because the depth of its awfulness was so unexpected and so out-of-kilter with the previous few seasons that it took on soap opera-levels of addictiveness.
It wasn’t fun to experience in the moment, but there’s no doubt that you had to pay attention to it. Watching it as a fan, just about any scenario seemed possible from week to week:
Our Hall of Fame Coach just took a knee at midseason rather than be bothered to finish the final few games!
Wait, is our Offensive Line Coach actually the Head Coach of this team, and why does he seem mildly unhinged while leading the team out to 2001?
If we score 400 points and gain 87,000 yards of total offense, will it be enough to win a game?
Which assistant coach on this staff drives me the most crazy – this guy, this guy, this guy or this guy?
Could I actually start at quarterback for this squad?
How did things fall apart this quickly and this profoundly?
Did we actually just lose to The Citadel, and did it feel like they should’ve beaten us worse than they did?
Those were all thoughts that I and many other Gamecock fans had during the 2015 campaign, and as much as I hated that year and never want to see the likes of it repeated in Columbia, I find myself almost nostalgic for it now.
For the record, I think this program is headed in the right direction. I love the work ethic and resiliency of this coaching staff. I love the fight and perseverance in these players. I do believe, somewhere way down in my heart, that better days await us.
I do.
I wasn’t sure about that a year ago.
But in a bizarre way, the utter, phenomenal, unforgettable 35,000-foot free fall that was last season simply was more entertaining than this one has been. I hated it, I never want to experience it again – but I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
I can absolutely take my eyes off this team.
I can take my eyes off them for long stretches at a time.
They lose robotically and in the exact same fashion, week after week.
They try valiantly.
They battle defensively.
They do not get blown out.
They do not make you angry, happy or sad.
And they cannot score.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
When I watch them turn in yet another routine, respectable loss, I keep thinking about Russell Crowe in “Gladiator” screaming “Are you not entertained???!!!!” at the assembled crowd. This year, at this time, with this team, I have to be honest:
I’m not entertained. I am not.
Even in losing, they do not entertain.
The Artist Formerly Known as Pharoh Cooper Game Balls
Let’s all feel the love by handing out Game Balls to the few, the proud, the following:
South Carolina Fans for Showing Up By the Tens of Thousands to Watch a 2-3 Team the Day After a Devastating Hurricane Decimated the State – From the vantage point of my recliner, it seemed like the only empty spots in Williams-Brice were the ones Georgia fans would have typically purchased in the corners of the East Upper Deck and the top of one end zone. And for at least 15 minutes or so, the fans made a spirited effort to pretend this was an SEC game that actually had meaning. You can’t say we don’t care. We may be bored, but we care.
The Weather Channel – A couple of years ago, I realized my parents were officially old when I noticed them watching the Weather Channel for long stretches, on a frequent basis. Which is exactly why I couldn’t help but realize just how old I’d become when I found myself riveted by hours and hours of Weather Channel coverage last weekend. I watched the same people standing in the same standing water on Folly Beach over and over again, and was fascinated by it. Nice knowing you, youth.
Sean Kelly – When your punter is the most valuable player on your football team through six games, and by a wide margin, you might say you are desperately searching for playmakers.
Open Dates – They always seem to come right at the moment when you’re exhausted with watching Gamecock football. Open dates are forgiving like that.
Deflated Balls
There are a few Deflated Balls to hand out this week, and we’ve got to start somewhere, so it might as well be here:
Whatever’s Happening When USC Attempts to Return a Punt This Season – Multiple Gamecocks muffed what felt like several thousand punts thus far heading into the UGA game, leading the coaches to declare tight end Hayden Hurst as the new punt returner. Oddly, Hurst declined to even come within a city block or two of a punt during the game, allowing the kicks to roll – and roll, and roll – stifling any and all momentum and turning the game into a field position battle that Georgia won more emphatically than General Sherman won the March to the Sea. The Dawgs were totally fine with running the ball, infrequently scoring a touchdown after a long drive, allowing the Gamecocks to stall and sputter on offense, and punting, since no one in a South Carolina uniform had any intention of catching a punt and returning it for positive yardage.
“Quarterback Controversies” – There are none. I said it last week and will keep saying it as long as I have to. For a team this young, this inexperienced and this unconfident, it doesn’t matter who plays quarterback for South Carolina in 2016. Whoever it is will struggle. Whoever it is will make you want someone else – anyone else – to be playing quarterback. Whoever it is will look tentative, indecisive and not particularly talented – or even serviceable. There are no Deshaun Watson or Lamar Jackson clones on this roster. Just watch the games and stop worrying about who’s playing quarterback, because this is as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future.
Stay Classy, Dawgs – Many Georgia fans seemed inexplicably livid about USC deciding to move the game to Sunday – despite the fact that, you know, a major hurricane was rumbling through the Palmetto State – and almost seemed to prefer not playing the game at all. When a fallen tree came dangerously close to crushing Gamecock athletics director Ray Tanner’s home in Columbia, a Georgia message board lit up with ecstatic posts. “Serves him right for being an idiot,” wrote one fan. “Karma!” wrote another. By Sunday, there were reports of UGA fans spraying graffiti on the USC campus Saturday night – again, the same day a lethal hurricane hit the state. Every fan base has some pathological psychos. I know ours does – I’ve sat next to them a bunch of times at Williams-Brice. Still, when you’re more pissy about yourself being inconvenienced by a football kickoff time than you are about an entire state being under floodwaters from a hurricane, it’s probably time to give up sports, move to a monastery, kneel in front of the Almighty and repent your sins.
SEC Teams Just Acting Like They May Not Play Each Other, Even Though Conference Championships Might Be at Stake – When the hurricane forecast solidified by mid-last week, Florida officials quickly made it very clear that they weren’t all that interested in finding an alternative to the previously scheduled game against LSU in Gainesville. LSU proposed hosting the Gators – something USC had to do just last year when a flood swamped Columbia and wiped out a home game against the Tigers. Florida wanted no part of that, nor did its leaders seem inclined to find an alternative date. Eventually UF just announced the game was canceled, never to be heard from again. That’s all fine…except that it directly affects the conference race. Tennessee lost to Texas A&M last weekend. What if they lose to Alabama and go 6-2 in the league – only to watch a Florida team they defeated go 6-1 and win the East because they ran away from playing LSU? You can’t just cancel league games, folks. There’s a date on the calendar, somewhere, that works. I know it’s not easy to reschedule, but that’s why they pay you to be an athletics director. Find a (bleeping) date.
SC Gov. Nikki Haley Seeming Annoyed that USC Might Actually Play a Football Game – You know what I want when I’m looking for leadership from the governor of my state? That’s right: Condescension!!!! Yeah, I want to feel like I’m being talked to like I’m five-years-old! That’s what leadership’s all about, folks. A clearly miffed Haley told reporters USC could play the game if it really, really wanted to, but that her office would do next to nothing to help them, didn’t support the holding of the game, and whined she’d “not really heard much” from the university, almost like a kid on the playground who’d been left out of the cool clique. Something tells me her response would have been 100 percent different if Clemson University had a game affected by weather. Can you fathom the governor of Georgia acting like this if UGA needed to reschedule a football game? Or the Alabama governor if the Tide needed to? I’m amazed at the lack of support the University of South Carolina receives from its own leaders, media and citizens some times. It’s genuinely unique, and not at all encouraging, and it’s all part of the strange uphill climb that is being a Gamecock fan for life. Thanks for the support, guv.
Well, after Hurricane Boredom, I’m actually looking forward to an open date.
Let’s recharge the batteries, watch other teams and see where we are two weeks from now.
Until then, I’ll be napping.
ALSO SEE: Snap count - How many snaps did each Carolina player take against UGA?|The Insider Report - More on the decommitment of T.J. Moore | Three and out - What did we learn from loss to UGA?
