Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com .
Following is this week’s Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it each Friday, sign up here .
Can you believe it’s been 10 years?
Though the South Carolina football program was a participant in ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast as recently as a year ago, a full decade has gone by since the most important pregame show in college sports last made a stop at the Columbia campus.
GameDay’s 2014 visit arrived at what would seem in hindsight to be a kind of final curtain for the high-wattage glory days of the Steve Spurrier Era. By that point in Spurrier’s run, we’d all gotten used to the glare of ESPN’s spotlight. The team was annually featured on one of the network’s Thursday night game broadcasts back in those days, a designation that the Ball Coach seemed to enjoy and that on multiple occasions inspired memorably raucous environments at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Indeed, it had begun to seem like the bright-shining spotlight was where South Carolina football belonged, at long last.
And then, almost as quickly as it arrived, it was gone: The national attention, the wild excitement, the brand-name players, the expectations, the spotlight’s glare.
Sure, there have been plenty of moments to savor for South Carolina football in the years since.
But that buzz, that hum of anticipation that surrounds an established program, has been largely absent.
Shane Beamer has worked overtime to change that since being named the program’s head coach in December 2020. He’s been accessible with the media, a warm and friendly presence on the field, in the locker room and at press conferences. From Day One, he has seemed happy to do the work to sell his team, his school and his state, perhaps more than any other coach in the program’s history.
But nothing sells quite like winning.
And after South Carolina dismantled Kentucky on the road in a 31-6 humiliation that felt mildly shocking to just about everyone alive other than (apparently) Beamer and the players, the national spotlight has turned back in the direction of Williams-Brice Stadium.
Can we keep it shining on us this time?
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Commanding Attention
Rather than trying to fly under the radar and hide from the added attention, Beamer appears to be relishing it. In fact, he’s already made public his expectations that this kind of attention will become commonplace.
“Like I told our players yesterday, this is going to be the first of many times that GameDay comes here for one of our football games,” the coach said in his weekly press conference before the LSU game .
As I wrote in my column from the Kentucky game , Beamer seems to genuinely enjoy proving doubters wrong – it’s clear he uses doubt as fuel. Under Beamer, South Carolina has often seemed at its best when it is doubted the most, whether by its own fans, the national media or both.
Which leads us to this weekend’s most important question: Can the program finally be at its best when it has a little momentum and some wind at its back? Can it thrive under the bright lights rather than when darkness seems to be descending?
Beamer addressed the topic himself this week, wondering aloud how the team might perform with a packed “bandwagon” of supporters.
“We need to get used to it, but we need to make sure that we’re handling distractions the right way, and we also have to handle success the right way, and realize that the bandwagon, if you will, is getting full in a lot of ways,” he said.
Bandwagons, spotlights, intense media attention – these are all challenges that you hope your football program faces on a regular basis.
They’re the kinds of challenges that South Carolina football hasn’t had to deal with in a decade.
But if the Gamecocks find a way to beat LSU on Saturday, you can rest assured that’s going to change.
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Shock to the System, Part Two?
If Beamer has made it a habit of thriving on doubt, there’s still plenty of that to go around. Despite the beatdown of Kentucky and the arrival of GameDay, South Carolina enters its contest against LSU as notable underdogs, with the Tigers being favored in the vicinity of a touchdown for much of the week.
No, expectations aren’t hovering near the basement level like they were after the Gamecocks struggled to dismiss Old Dominion in the season opener, but there are still plenty of observers who need to see a little more from South Carolina before they can fully allow themselves to believe this program’s ready to go on a run.
In many ways, winning at home against LSU might feel even more shocking than what the Gamecocks just accomplished on the road in Lexington. If it happens, all bets are off, and this young season – which felt like it was already sliding into an empty cave after just the first week, never to be seen again – would suddenly be transformed into a riveting, can’t-miss saga the likes of which we haven’t experienced around here since names like Clowney and Jeffery were on the roster.
The opportunity that is in front of the team has become larger than life. Beat LSU, take care of business against Akron, and all the sudden you’re 4-0 leading into an absolutely bonkers, blockbuster October that features contests against Ole Miss, Alabama and Oklahoma. If you thought recruits were suddenly turning their eyes back towards Columbia with GameDay coming to campus, imagine the volume surrounding the program should South Carolina enter October undefeated.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?
LSU is the task in front of us, and it’s a tall one indeed – the Bayou Bengals have beaten the Gamecocks seven straight times. Their players, coaches and fans will enter Williams-Brice on Saturday with full confidence that they’ll shortly return to Baton Rouge as victors.
South Carolina must remove that belief from them by force.
And they’ll have to do it under a very bright spotlight.
We wouldn’t want it any other way.
Tell me your thoughts about the spotlight returning to Columbia by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com .
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