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, July 16, 2021.

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

There aren’t many moments in life you can look back on and say, “That was the instant my life changed for the better.”

But I have one.

On the last day of January this year, I took a flier on an Audible subscription – a membership service that gives you access to a vast library of audiobooks, podcasts and other stuff you can listen to while you’re exercising, driving, walking the dog or sitting in the backyard staring at the sky.

I came to it because I’d finally reached a breaking point. For the 10,000th time, I had picked up my copy of a massive, very important 19th Century novel by a famous author you’ve all heard of, held it in my hands, glanced longingly at the ecstatic blurbs on the back cover, and thought, “Is this finally going to be the year I read this thing?"

I’d been trying for two decades.

I’d get through four or five pages and something would come up (I would get hungry, I’d see online alerts that South Carolina was receiving interest from a talented wide receiver from Florida, whatever), and the book would go back on the shelf in my office, where it would remain for another six months until I remembered that this was supposed to be the year I finished it.

That’s why I turned to Audible. For some time, I had been starting each day with a nice, long, hour-and-a-half walk, and I was tired of listening to the same 12 songs on Apple Music, and my favorite podcasts had gotten stale, and nothing good usually happens when I daydream for an extended period, so I figured, “If I can’t finish this book with my own two eyes, maybe I should pay someone to read it to me while I stroll the Atlanta suburbs.”

I was hooked within hours.

Before long, one Very Important, Massive 19th Century Novel after another had been conquered. Even on days I didn’t feel like walking, or it was raining, or I was distracted by online alerts about receivers who were interested in South Carolina, I still got out there and moved around for a few minutes because I needed to know what would happen next in whatever book I was reading.

Over time, I learned an important secret to successful Audible listening: The person telling you the story is more important than anything else in terms of how I remember the book.

And as South Carolina football embarks on yet another new beginning, it’s worth wondering. Who will be telling the story of our school and our team?

Great stories tell themselves, I’d always believed. And great writers transcend time, country, eras and epochs, language barriers and everything else.

After all, Tolstoy is going to be Tolstoy no matter who gives voice to his words. Right?

Wrong.

This was a fact I learned the hard way last month, when I finally tackled Tolstoy’s mammoth “War and Peace” and made it twice around the block in my neighborhood before I realized I could not spend 60 interminable hours with the wheezy, grandiose narrator who was reading the novel to me. This dude sounded like he’d smoked 12 packs of unfiltered cigarettes before sitting down at the microphone, then made the inexplicable decision to hold his nose to give his voice a whistly, high-pitched whine. I actually ripped off my headphones in disgust.

Tolstoy may be Tolstoy, but even he needs a good narrator.

This is a principle to which fans of Alabama football can relate. Though Gamecock fans often tell themselves that schools like Alabama simply need to provide uniforms and equipment and five-star athletes will flock to play there, no SEC university in recent memory has endured a more embarrassing stretch than the Tide’s “Mike Dubose to Dennis Franchione to Mike Price to Mike Shula” Era in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

Only when Nick Saban arrived and used the available raw material to spin a consistent, coherent tale about what Alabama football could be, should be and would be did Alabama football become Alabama football again.

We often hear it said that a college program is only as good as its athletes. There’s truth to the cliché, but the more accurate assessment is that you’re only as good as the face of your program who is responsible for getting the athletes.

When I think of the college programs that have had lasting success, they’re almost always synonymous with a forceful personality, with someone who is able to create and sustain a compelling and attractive narrative about their university that remains constant through changes in fashion and fads.

If I say “Duke basketball during the last 40 years” to you, your very first thought will be of Mike Kryzezewski, despite the galaxy of All-Americans who have traveled through Durham at the time.

Meanwhile, if I contemplate those periods when South Carolina programs have been only intermittently successful (or worse), I usually think of players first. Ask me to recall South Carolina basketball in the ‘90s and I’ll think first of BJ McKie, then Larry Davis, and then eventually I’ll remember that Eddie Fogler coached the team. South Carolina football in the ‘90s? Steve Taneyhill, Brandon Bennett, and I don’t even want to know who was coaching.

On the other hand, I associate sustained Gamecock success with coaches who were able to relate a unique vision of what South Carolina could be. The school itself never changed, but it seemed different when these coaches talked about it and embodied its possibilities.

That’s why the phrase “Gamecock baseball circa 2000-2012” is going to bring Ray Tanner to the forefront first, then Jackie Bradley and Michael Roth and Justin Smoak. No matter how unforgettable A’ja Wilson and Aliyah Boston were, USC women’s basketball is Dawn Staley. And even with Marcus Lattimore, Jadeveon Clowney and Connor Shaw roaming the sidelines, Steve Spurrier blocked out the sun while he was in Columbia.

The school, then, is the author, and the players are the characters in the tale. But the coach is the person who’s telling us the story.

And we better remember the sound of their voice.

What am I looking for in an audiobook narrator?

It’s hard to pin down or articulate in a meaningful way – sometimes you just know greatness when you hear it. But in general, I’m looking for vibrant enthusiasm, for a feeling that the person reading this book to you thinks that reading this book to you is the most important thing they’ve ever done.

Oddly, name-brand actors rarely become Audiobook Narrator Hall of Famers. Instead, you want either vaguely recognizable actors (like Thandiwe Newton, who you may or may not know from “Mission Impossible 2” and “Westworld”, or Richard Armitage, who you may or may not know from “The Hobbit” movies). Or you want actors who you’ve never heard of at all who have made audiobook narration their specialty, like the immortal Simon Vance or Juliet Stevenson. (I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the universe who has actually said, out loud, “Oh, Simon Vance is narrating this one? YES!”, thereby ascending directly into Dork Heaven).

What you want most of all is someone who is acting behind that microphone, who is giving each character a distinctive voice, whose delivery slows down and builds to a rising pitch when something important is happening, as though to alert the listener “You can stop daydreaming about South Carolina recruiting and start focusing on this scene right now, because it’s really, really important.”

You want someone who would have been the star in their local theater company, someone who would have stolen scenes in a regional play as though they were starring in a Broadway production, even if they were actually laboring in a church musical or a smalltown acting troupe with dentists and receptionists.

What you want, always, is a natural storyteller.

Tell me your story about what South Carolina can be by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

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