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. 8, 2021.

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

You know what I used to want for us? Tennessee’s life.

You’re not going to believe this, but once upon a time, the University of Tennessee was the model of stability in the Southeastern Conference.

When I was a student at South Carolina way back in the 1990s, things seemed to last forever up on Old Rocky Top. From 1977 through 2008, the Volunteer football program won regularly and did it with just two head coaches. Johnny Majors roamed the sidelines for 16 seasons in Knoxville before giving way to his protégé Phillip Fulmer, who then hung around for a little more than 16 seasons himself.

For fans like me, disheartened by watching the Gamecocks immediately turn into cannon fodder upon joining the SEC in the early '90s, there was one simple goal: Become Tennessee. In other words, become a rock-solid, steady SEC program, a place where things were built to last, a place where fans didn’t have to keep checking the media guide each year to remind themselves who was coaching their own team.

By the time Fulmer was not-so-gently pushed aside in 2008, I felt like he’d been part of my life since I was born, a permanently grinning fixture through the years not unlike a mildly annoying uncle who always shows up at family reunions and Christmas gatherings, never says much, smiles a lot and leaves you wondering exactly why he came.

Not seeing him lumbering along the Tennessee sideline in 2009 was an almost shocking experience – he’d become as everlasting as a rock formation in the Great Smoky Mountains that hover near Tennessee’s campus.

Meanwhile, the Gamecocks seemed to introduce a new head coach every couple of seasons or so: There were an astonishing seven South Carolina head coaches in that same 30+-year period that Tennessee had only two (which means there was a new Gamecock coach on average every four to five seasons). In the Palmetto State, we’d become more accustomed to seeing new hire press conferences than we were bowl game appearances.

And it seemed like that state of affairs might just last forever.

Then the universe spun off its axis.

We can mark the change in 2005.

That’s when Steve Spurrier arrived at South Carolina and decided to stay awhile. More than a decade later, the Ball Coach was still leading the Gamecocks into the 2015 season, by which point Tennessee had transformed into a creaky state fair carnival ride that leaves everyone queasy.

Once the Gold Standard (the Orange Standard?) for stability, UT had drifted towards incoherence and outright weirdness in the post-Fulmer years. After Fulmer’s retreat, Lane Kiffin (of all people) stopped by Knoxville for a single season before bolting for Southern Cal, claiming it had been his lifelong dream to coach in Los Angeles.

The Vols then rolled the dice on an unproven Derek Dooley, hoping his last name might magically return the program to SEC Championship Game appearances. It did not.

From there, we moved directly into the Butch Jones Era, among the strangest of any eras in college football history. Jones’s tenure would be remembered less for memorable victories and more for odd press conferences and bouts of sideline weeping. I’m just going to come right out and say it: I miss the Butch Jones Era.

This was followed by three spectacularly unmemorable Jeremy Pruitt seasons, which brings us to the present day with first-year Volunteer coach Josh Heupel. Is he finally the answer in Knoxville? At this point, who can say?

Heupel’s Volunteers are 3-2 in 2021 with losses to Pittsburgh and Florida, but they’re coming off an impressive fire-bombing of Missouri last week to the tune of 62-24, which was enough to make them double-digit favorites at home against your South Carolina Gamecocks.

So that’s what we have at stake on Saturday in Neyland Stadium – the Instability Bowl – featuring two spun-out programs who are both trying to find traction on solid ground in the SEC East, trying to settle in for the long haul instead of perpetually rebuilding.

Somehow, Tennessee seems ahead of South Carolina in this process despite more than a decade of chaos so bizarre it was almost awe-inspiring.

And if the South Carolina program wants to change that perception?

Well, the Slippery Slope to Stability rises in the Smokies. Time to start climbing it.

As always, I enjoyed the reader responses to my most recent column, “The In-Between Phase,” from that unimaginable Troy game. If you missed the column, check it out right here.

Many of you suggested that – like me – you are also struggling with hair that cannot progress past the In-Between Phase. I’m glad I’m not alone out there.

A reader named Jeffrey even passed along a five-pronged haircare plan that I’ll do my best to follow. “Take these steps,” Jeffrey wrote. “1. Cut it short, no wispy parts. 2. After a few months, go buy some clippers and try increasingly shorter guards. If you find one that works, cool. 3. If not, buzz cut it with clippers about 1 time a week. 4. If all else fails whip out the razor. I shave twice a week. 5. Above all remember, you aren’t fooling anyone.”

Thank you, Jeffrey. I printed this out, framed it and placed it beside my bathroom sink for continued inspiration. Let the record show that I am most certainly not fooling anyone.

Others of you noticed that my wife Christie’s gameday behavior resembled that of your own spouses. A reader named Lark wrote, “It must be a Christie/Christy thing. My wife Christy will say ‘I just can't watch this anymore. I'm going out for a walk.’ Her first words upon return are, ‘How bad did we lose?’”

A reader known as the Jersey Cock describes similar happenings in his household. “When my wife wants South Carolina to do good while watching them play any sport, she leaves the room, and it seems to work,” wrote Jersey. For what it’s worth, the Gamecocks did end up surviving that Troy game after Mrs. Davis retreated upstairs.

Maybe we can build on this.

Honey, can you make yourself busy doing something besides watching football on Saturday afternoon?

Tell me how you think the Gamecock program can put itself on the path to stability by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

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