Scott Davis: The Free State of Muschamp
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.
ALSO SEE: Weekend notes - Top Gamecocks' target on commit watch? | More on South Carolina's dynamic training system in The Insider Report | PODCAST - Should Gamecocks play Jake Bentley?
Around 7 p.m. on Saturday, as I was prepping a ridiculous amount of fried shrimp for my Mom, Dad and me to gorge on, I suddenly realized that I didn’t care if I watched another football game that day.
Huh?
How did that happen?
I’d zipped over to my parents’ house at Lake Greenwood, S.C., for the shrimp feast as well as a long day of football watching with my Dad. I’d looked forward to the occasion for days, because unlike many, I actually enjoy bye weeks. I’m usually so ready for a break from South Carolina Gamecock football that byes begin to represent a joyous opportunity to watch the game without agonizing over the results. It’s angst-free football fandom.
The mood in the house soured quickly, though, after Clemson’s absurd, illogical win over N.C. State (at this point, I’m starting to wonder if Dabo Swinney and God really are B.F.F.’s, as Dabo has always made sure to remind us that they are). Then the Alabama-Tennessee game devolved into an uninteresting blowout.
And by the time we got to the evening matchups, my Dad was saying things like, “Who’s playing tonight? Ole Miss? Ohio State? Do we care about these games?”
That’s when my Mom perked up and said, “Hey, do y’all just want to watch a movie? We’ve got that new Matthew McConaughey movie ordered.”
Dad and I jumped all over that offer like starving dogs pouncing on roadkill.
You mean I have the option to watch McConaughey do McConaughey things in “The Free State of Jones” instead of continuing to reflect on how poorly this football season’s going?
YES!
Let’s watch a movie! Let’s totally not watch football for awhile!
Let there be no doubt: Not watching football went well.
I’ve written before in this column about my enjoyment of McConaughey’s work, and at some point along the way, I converted my parents into McConaughey fans, as well.
We reveled in every over-the-top McConaughey monologue and speech. We smiled as we watched him deliver vengeance to awful human beings who deserved his wrath. We even appreciated his bizarre 19th Century beard and the excellence of his Southern accent.
By the movie’s end, McConaughey’s character – a frustrated one-time Confederate soldier – had declared his Mississippi county to simply be free of any allegiance whatsoever, whether to the Confederacy, the Union or anyone else. He and his followers were making their own rules and surprising their enemies with bold, unexpected attacks.
You’ll be shocked to hear this, but as most all things do, these developments in the movie made me start thinking about South Carolina football.
Like McConaughey, coach Will Muschamp faces interesting choices in the days ahead. And similarly, Muschamp should also be feeling absolute, total freedom to do whatever he wants – to make his own rules. Alright, alright, alright.
After the Gamecock offense looked downright anorexic against Georgia – which is the way they’ve looked during, oh, every single football game this season – the gossip started swirling.
Is true freshman Jake Bentley going to start at QB after the bye week?
Are we finally done trying to prop up this feelgood Perry Orth storyline?
Have we already given up on Brandon McIlwain and offensive coordinator Kurt Roper after a mere half-season?
I hope Muschamp approaches all these decisions with a clear mind, one that is free of worry or anxiety.
Because the truth is, right now, with this group of guys, at this point in his tenure and with fan expectations hovering in the neighborhood of zero, he can do whatever he wants.
South Carolina ranks 128th out of 128 Division 1 offenses. It cannot get any worse, literally. It cannot get any worse. So what does that mean?
It means Muschamp can play whoever he wants at quarterback, or anywhere else.
There are no allegiances, no expectations, no laws that can’t be broken.
This is the Free State of Muschamp.
And it might be time to boldly gamble on surprising our enemies.
To Play or Not to Play, That is the Question
You can’t really say that Muschamp has enjoyed any sort of honeymoon phase as South Carolina’s new head football coach. He replaced the winningest coach in school history. He entered the job as someone who had been perceived as an underperformer as Florida’s coach. And the national media essentially cackled aloud at his hire.
Still, Gamecock fans have largely seemed to give the new coach and his staff a long leash as they work to try and rejuvenate the program. Most sane human beings recognize that this roster is wildly young and lacks difference-makers on both sides of the football, and so they have adjusted their expectations accordingly.
By the second quarter of the Mississippi State game, I’d already down-shifted into “Oh, OK, it’s definitely not happening this season, so let’s just play as many young guys as we can and see if they can learn to compete in the SEC” mode.
Which leads us to the matter at hand: After disastrous offensive performances during the first six weeks of the season, do you go ahead and burn the expected redshirt on the highly touted Bentley to try to construct a semblance of an actual working offense, or do you just go ahead and take a knee on 2016, try to get better every week and plan for the future?
It’s an interesting dilemma.
Gamecock fans can’t seem to agree on much of anything, whether it’s uniform colors and combinations, fight songs, coordinated cheers, “Sandstorm” or even whether we like the Mic Guy’s antics at the beginnings of games. I guess other fan bases argue amongst themselves, too, but Lord, it seems like USC fans have made a living out of conducting civil war with one another. It’s by far the least satisfying thing about being a part of Gamecock Nation.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that the Carolina faithful have evenly divided themselves on the topic of the moment: Bentley now or Bentley later?
I try to take the temperature of South Carolina fans often, and in doing so, I’ve finally just learned to accept that there are simply always going to be some die-hard redshirt proponents out there, no matter what the situation is or what it means for the future. This group wants to hoard redshirt years like penny-pinching Great Depression-era accountants scrimped to find profits.
Remember how many observers gasped and wrung their hands when the Atlanta Falcons traded several draft picks to move up and select wide receiver Julio Jones in the NFL Draft a few years ago? It doesn’t matter that Jones has become the best and most reliable receiver in football or that none of the players drafted with the traded picks ever amounted to anything in the NFL. To the people who fixate on hoarding draft picks at all costs, this was the Original Sin, and they’ll never, ever admit that the move was a good one, even when Jones inevitably winds up in the Hall of Fame.
Redshirt absolutists are the same way.
Nirvana to this crowd is that every single starter for the Gamecocks is a fifth-year senior who has been in the program for roughly a decade, is “fully developed” in the weight room, stronger than every UFC fighter combined, and as mature as Abraham Lincoln.
I guess in a perfect world I can understand those sentiments.
Unfortunately for all of us, we live in an imperfect world. We live in a college football environment in which any elite player who has even a whisper of an opportunity to play in the NFL leaves school after his third season to pursue professional football.
Jameis Winston and Johnny Manziel – both Heisman Trophy winners – redshirted during their true freshman campaigns. They both left after starting for two years and setting school records. Do you think Florida State or Texas A&M fans might be looking back and thinking, “Huh, maybe we should have played that dude as a true freshman and at least gotten three years out of him”?
Yes. Yes, they are.
Most observers were stunned when Andrew Luck elected to stay at Stanford and play during his redshirt junior season. There was never even a question that he’d forgo his redshirt senior season, which he wisely did.
But forget about the NFL.
It’s damn hard to keep anyone – even marginal players – in school for five years at this point. In the current climate, if a guy’s not playing as much as he wants to, he transfers to a lower-tier college in search of PT. If a player’s already graduated and doesn’t seem to be contributing, he might just decide he’d rather not wake up at 5:30 a.m. and hit the weight room every day, and just bounce up out of the program.
For the most part, the fifth-year seniors playing and contributing for American college football teams right now are typically limited to offensive linemen, and….offensive linemen. Sure, there are projects and late-bloomers who eventually come into their own. It happens.
It just doesn’t happen very often. Not anymore.
And it’s hard for me to see why I’d count on it happening now.
The Winning Gamble?
Now…
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking that I’m suggesting inserting Jake Bentley at QB will solve all of South Carolina’s problems, cure all of its offensive ills and in general make the people of the Palmetto State be happier and more productive citizens of society.
And you’d be wrong.
I don’t think that.
I think Bentley would probably struggle, perhaps mightily at times, just as McIlwain and Orth have. I have my doubts that playing him would do much to change the trajectory of this lost season. Perhaps it would even hurt his confidence going forward.
I have no idea if he’d succeed.
But if I were Muschamp, I certainly wouldn’t not play him just because “hey, we always redshirt guys that should be in high school right now” or because he “just hasn’t had enough time in the weight room” or because “he needs a full year to study the playbook.”
The rules changed a long time ago in college football.
Guys that may be able to help should be on the field, now and not later.
I don’t know if Bentley can help right now or not. No fan does.
But if Muschamp thinks he can, even for a single play this season, then he should feel free – absolutely free – to play him.
There are no rules, not in 2016, and certainly not with this team.