Paul Mainieri speaks on lacking fan turnout at Founders Park: 'I don't blame the fans at all'
In the moments before the final strike of the weekend crossed home plate, one consistent chant became deafening inside the ballpark.
“LSU! LSU! LSU! LSU!”
Only this wasn’t an LSU home game at Alex Box Stadium. A large contingent of fans in purple and gold took over an almost empty Founders Park this past Saturday. This was how South Carolina’s final home game of 2025 ended.
LSU fans showed up in droves as the top-ranked Tigers took the weekend series. It was also like this when the Gamecocks were swept by Florida at the beginning of May. Plenty of Gator fans were scattered throughout the many empty garnet-backed seats.
The attendance averages for both weekends saw more than 7,500 fans at the Florida series and a little over 7,000 when LSU was in town. Numbers can always be misleading. One apparent thing is a lack of fan turnout at Founders Park for South Carolina, and head coach Paul Mainieri is fully aware of it.
“You’ve got to win, and you have to show that you’re worth supporting the program, you know, worth the fans supporting it,” Mainieri said on 107.5 The Game on Monday. “I don’t blame them for not coming to the games. We didn’t have a great product on the field this year.”
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With the SEC Tournament starting Tuesday, the Gamecocks are nearing the end of a disappointing season in Mainieri’s first year. They’re currently 28-28 overall with their worst-ever record in the SEC at 6-24. If they lose to Florida, they will finish with a losing record for the second time since 2022.
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Mainieri said if he were a fan, he would want to support a winning team as well. But that’s not the case right now, as South Carolina has an important offseason looming to try and fix what went wrong.
“I don’t blame the fans at all,” he said. “I only blame myself and our team for not providing the product out there that they would want to be at Founders Park and supporting us.”
While there isn’t much Mainieri can do to fix the current season, he assured things will get better moving forward. It may just “take a little bit more time than most of us would like to,” he said.
“It’s going to be a fun journey. We’ve got a ways to go,” Mainieri added. “But sometimes, you have to almost get to rock bottom before you can start to make the improvement to get the program to where you want it to be. I don’t have any doubt we’re going to get there.”
