Scott Davis: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting
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.
Just about every college football season begins the same way.
As a fan, you stagger to the finish line the previous November, start thinking all is lost, consider giving up the game and maybe just calling it a day on caring about sports at all. Then you eat a ton of food during the holidays and feel pretty darn content doing it. You inadvertently get wrapped up in the NFL playoffs and start saying things like, “You know what? This IS a great freaking sport, isn’t it?” Spring begins to bloom. And you’re looking outside at flowers and sunny skies, and life seems filled with possibility, and before you know it, you’re hooked in again.
In the words of the almighty Frank Sinatra, “Love is the tender trap.”
Like burgers, beer, brownies, bacon and Kevin Hart movies, college football is something you can’t quit even though you know it would be better for you if you did.
And that can be a problem if you enjoy rationality and sane thinking, especially at this time of year. Because, my friends, in my wildest fantasies, I continue to try to believe that I’m an uber-reasonable college football fan. I continue to think I can watch South Carolina play football games and behave normally, with normal expectations, hopes and dreams. I believe I can be a Reasonable Guy.
Reasonable Guy knows we went 3-9 last year. Reasonable Guy knows we lost to, among many others, the University of Kentucky (in football!!!!), Missouri and, um, a military school from Charleston last year. Reasonable Guy knows we’re breaking in a new head coach who did the opposite of setting the world on fire at Florida – a place where it’s pretty easy to set the world on fire.
Reasonable Guy knows we’ve done just about everything but put out an “Open Auditions” ad in the school newspaper to try and find a running back who can gain positive yardage. Reasonable Guy knows we’ll either start a former walk-on or a true freshman at quarterback. Reasonable Guy knows that our defensive scheme last year largely consisted of “Stand 1,000 miles from the line of scrimmage and then impersonate a department store mannequin,” and that the aftershocks of that debacle could resonate into this season.
And Reasonable Guy also knows that the likes of Georgia, Tennessee and Florida loom on the schedule (plus another team from the Palmetto State that apparently has some good players and stuff).
If ever there was a year for a Gamecock fan to enter a football season with zero expectations, this would be the one. See, when Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier took the reins in Columbia, they carried the burden of their legendary status with them. They were supposed to be the guys who finally – FINALLY – breathed life into this program, the saviors of an entire fan base. It didn’t matter whether there was any talent on the roster or not.
In 1999 and 2005, the expectations were there even if they shouldn’t have been, simply because of the guy strapping on a headset on the sidelines.
Now? Not so much. Or maybe you haven’t been checking out the media’s preseason predictions or paying attention to what’s happening in Vegas, where the Gamecocks have become college football’s equivalent of the Zika virus (3.5-point ‘dogs to Vanderbilt? VANDERBILT?????)
Say it with me: There are no expectations in 2016 – not for this team, this coaching staff or these fans.
I was talking to my old USC roommate earlier this week, who like me is a Gamecock fan lifer. We’re almost like cops who were partners on the same beat for decades at this point, comparing gunshot wounds and stabbing scars as we reminisce about past Carolina football seasons.
“I can’t ever remember coming into a season with expectations this low,” I told him. “It’s almost freeing. Nothing can hurt me now. We went 3-9 and lost to The Citadel last year and (expletive deleted) Clemson almost won the national title. I’ve survived everything now.”
It felt good to say it. I was finally free. The Gamecocks hadn’t killed me. Maybe I’d even start exercising again and eating right. Maybe I’d stop starting each morning with a sausage biscuit, and ease up on the beer.
Then I started reading Gamecock Central’s reports from this week’s open practices.
The Death of Reason
Remember those wonderfully bizarre “Hair Club for Men” commercials, where the narrator would yelp, “I’m not just the president of Hair Club for Men…I’m also a client!!!!” at the end?
Well, I’m not just a columnist for Gamecock Central, I’m also a client.
And I hope those guys won’t mind me saying that I find their August practice updates to be somewhere on the addiction spectrum alongside crack cocaine, heroin, tobacco AND smokeless tobacco.
Nuggets from the practice fields? I LOVE NUGGETS! I feast on nuggets! Tidbits? I crave tidbits like oxygen, brother!
One of the things I appreciate about the Gamecock Central dudes is that they call it like they see it. If a recruit is leaning anywhere but towards Columbia, S.C., they say so. If a guy’s struggling on the practice field, we know that. If there’s little depth at a certain position, it’s obvious.
And yet…
Like many fans, I find myself clinging to whatever glimmers of hope they do offer. So if I hear that a particular quarterback is throwing darts during 7-on-7 drills, and a couple of tight ends look tough to cover, and a member of the secondary is blanketing receivers, well…I start doing dumb things.
August is the mortal enemy of Reasonable Guy.
August is when reprehensible things start happening, and when I start thinking, “You know, we’ve got Kentucky, Vandy, Mizzou, Mississippi State, East Carolina, Western Carolina and UMASS on the schedule. And I mean, Tennessee and Florida aren’t THAT good. And who knows what’s happening at Georgia with Kirby Smart? And do we even know who’s playing quarterback for Texas A&M? Tell me again why we can’t win 8 games this season?”
And just like that, I’m back in again, like a guy doubling the pot in poker while holding a pair of deuces.
With each passing year, I’m amazed at just how easy it is for me to sign back up for Gamecock football. After all, this is a program that has played for the SEC championship once in a quarter of a century. A program that has lost to Furman, Pacific and The Citadel (TWICE!) in my lifetime. A program that employed Brad Scott as its head coach.
I should be cured of the South Carolina Gamecocks by now.
But I’m not. And every August, I remember exactly why I don’t want to be.
I don’t know if we’ll go 2-10 or 10-2 this season.
More than likely, it’ll be somewhere in between.
And ultimately, it won’t matter.
Because come August 2017, I’ll be reading practice reports again. And just like you, I’ll feel a dim flicker way down deep inside. I’ll know I shouldn’t trust it, and I’ll know it’ll probably just pave the pathway towards more heartbreak.
But I’ll give in.
I will give in.
And I will believe.