Scott Davis: Grace Under Pressure

Scott Davis has followed the South Carolina Gamecocks 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, Jan. 11, 2022. Scott also writes a weekly column that appears on Gamecock Central during football season.

Like many of my fellow Americans, I plopped down on the basement couch last week to rip through the new season of “Ozark” on Netflix.

Correction: The first half of the new season of “Ozark.”

In an odd move, Netflix announced nearly two years ago that the show would only be returning for a fourth and final season, rather than the previously planned two additional seasons…but that fourth and final season would be split into two “halves” of seven episodes apiece (which is nearly the length of a normal season). I’ve never claimed to be an intellectual, but I’m not entirely sure how splitting up the final season into two parts is much different than announcing “it’s coming back for two more seasons, just like we always said it was,” but fortunately no one asks me to make these critical, life-or-death decisions.

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I am a devoted “Ozark” watcher for the following reasons: 1. Most of it is filmed at Lake Allatoona, about 25 minutes north of my home in the farthest reaches of metro Atlanta; 2. I have enjoyed Jason Bateman’s weary, sarcastic “I just can’t believe I’ve been dropped into this ridiculous world with these idiots” shtick since he was a child actor on “Silver Spoons” in the early 1980s; 3. There’s a roughly 65-70% chance someone will be gunned down at the end of each episode (including key cast members); and 4. It warms my heart to see the citizens of another SEC state besides South Carolina being ridiculed – in this case, the good folks of Missouri.

Bateman’s character, Marty Byrde, is an easygoing family man and financial adviser who – for a multitude of convoluted and occasionally ludicrous reasons that I won’t go into here – winds up laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel (don’t ask). Across four seasons of mayhem, Byrde’s life has become increasingly perilous.

For Marty Byrde, it’s always something. I mean, it is alwaaaaaays something.

Federal agents are closing in. His son is fighting with his wife. His wife cheated on him. Who knows where his daughter is right now. His right-hand “man” is (or was) a girl barely out of high school who defines “loose cannon.” There are glitches in the money-laundering software program he uses. He’s trying to run a casino. On a boat. The local Missouri criminals want him dead. Oh, and the cartel is threatening to murder him and/or torture his family every other week or so.

It’s always something, man.

Somehow, he gets through every task on his plate each day without vomiting uncontrollably or even appearing to suffer from elevated blood pressure. Marty just puts his head down and checks off the items on his to-do list, which is why he inspired this meme:

I have none of Marty Byrde’s composure in my daily life.

I wish I did. If anything unexpected comes my way, I unravel – unexpected Atlanta traffic is enough to cause me to pull over to the emergency lane and started sobbing hysterically.

But college coaches?

College coaches have to summon every ounce of Marty Byrde’s grace under pressure. And they have to keep doing it, year after year after ever-loving year.

Because for them, it is truly always something.

Easy Does It

When you hire someone to be the head coach of a college program, you’re merely looking for a person who happens to be good at everything. Nothing major.

They’ll need to be able to connect with young people, need to be able to motivate them and keep them motivated. They need to have an eye for talent. They need to be unstoppable salespeople, capable of convincing teenagers that their university is the only place in the world they should spend the next four years.

They’ll need a lethal dose of charisma to keep fans interested, public speaking skills, media savvy, an electric personality. They also need to be masterminds in the sport they’re coaching, with X’s and O’s oozing out of their pores. They need to have a firm grasp of offense….and defense. They need to know how to massage the wounded egos of players who think they should be starting, to keep their own coaching staffs fired up and ready to work and happy to report to the office, to inspire supporters and alumni in good times and bad.

They need to be visionaries and big-picture people. But they need to be down to earth and capable of bonding with good ol’ regular folks, too.

In the NFL or NBA or Major League Baseball, the head coach or manager makes the game plans and works with the staff and coaches the games, and that’s about it (and that’s plenty).

In college, the coach is the CEO of his or her program, the General Manager, the game-planning guru, the motivational speaker, the father or mother figure for emotional teens, the Human Resources representative, the program’s publicist, the overlord of practice, the person who oversees the uniform combinations – just about everything other than sweeping up the stadium after games falls under their purview.

On any given day, they might be dealing with a rash of injuries. Or the wishy-washiness of adolescents who can’t decide on picking a college. Or a worldwide pandemic. Or an impatient fan base, or an impatient athletic director, or an athletic director who decides to leave for another opportunity, or a fellow coach who decides to leave for another opportunity, or a player’s angry Dad who starts tweeting that his son should be starting, or their school’s legacy or lack thereof.

It is always something.

Which is why you have to pick a person who loves pressure, lives it, breathes it and thrives in it.

It’s why you need someone as cool as Marty Byrde, someone who wants to be everything.

Basically, you need to find Dawn Staley.

Every single time a head coach job opening comes up. No pressure.

The Missing Links

Speaking of hiring coaches, Shane Beamer added Sterling Lucas as the edge coach on the defensive staff this week, which you can learn more about here.

You’ll find out about every new coach, every recruiting rumor and every item of Gamecock news under the sun if you take advantage of a limited-time deal for a Gamecock Central membership – just $1 for an entire year of coverage.

Here’s an article detailing “Ozark” filming locations in my neck of the woods. If you’re ever wondering what it looks and feels like where I write these columns each week, the answer is: A place that reminds Netflix executives of rural Missouri.

By the way, a staggering number of the movies and television shows you currently watch are filmed within 30 minutes of my house. Here’s a Time magazine article about it. Why doesn’t the state of South Carolina try to get in on this action?

An astonishing 312 million people have watched this clip of Queen and David Bowie singing “Under Pressure.”

And finally, does Marty Byrde have his own Wikipedia page? Of course, he does.

Stay cool, my friends. Just like our man Marty.

Tell me what’s on your mind by writing me at [email protected].