Scott Davis: Doubt and doom die in Death Valley

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 (sign up here) and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

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Things were getting increasingly dark.

I’m a part of multiple Gamecock-related group text chains that are active on gamedays in the fall, and as South Carolina’s ancient archrival opened up a lead and kept leading on Saturday, the messages I was receiving were getting more and more grim.

They always play their best game of the season against us.

Dabo has our number.

It’s over – we can’t get anything going.

I wasn’t responding at all. Radio silence is my mode of operation in times like these. I’d like to say it’s because I was calmly above the fray, filled with inner peace and fully expecting a South Carolina comeback. But the truth is, I wasn’t feeling good, either. And when I don’t feel good, I simply vanish.

After all of the epic victories, exhilarating moments and unforgettable highs from the previous few months of Gamecock football, it was all coming down to this: Was the best South Carolina team of the last decade going to lose to its mortal enemies…again?

Was the last Saturday in November 2024 going to remind us of all those November Saturdays from all of those years past? Was this really happening one more time?

And just like that, in the space of one blurred, hazy, unimaginable 10-second sprint to glory by South Carolina’s freshman quarterback, the answer came to us at last.

No.

No, it wasn’t.

This was going to be a different story written by different authors.

The answer came and it was the one we wanted, the one we longed for: This South Carolina team is different, this South Carolina football season is different, this program’s culture is different, and now, this age-old rivalry feels different, too.

For decades, we’ve been conditioned to expect the worst when South Carolina played Clemson. That’s because the worst often arrived. Like unruly puppies who’ve been popped on the nose a few too many times, we’d wince whenever we noticed that game at the end of the year approaching on the schedule.

We winced regardless of who was playing or coaching for either team.

After South Carolina joined the SEC more than 30 years ago and the program’s resources and talent level rose, we expected wins against Clemson to follow. Yet, all too often, the wins didn’t come. It felt to most of us like the Gamecocks should be beating the Tigers more often than not, but more often than not, they weren’t, and the state of the rivalry still felt stuck in the 1940s and ‘50s and ‘60s.

This confounded us.

We started grasping for answers – any answers. The excuses raged like a contagious virus: This is their Super Bowl. They only have to play one real game a year – meanwhile, we’re completely gassed by the time we get to that last game because of SEC competition. We’re cursed. Ben Tillman made a pact with the devil back in the 1800s.

And on and on and on it went, like a nauseating amusement park ride that never ended.

And they kept winning, and it kept not making any sense whatsoever, and we kept looking up towards the heavens and wondering exactly what we’d done to deserve this bizarre fate.

And those were the memories – hardened into steel by decades of disappointment – that most of us carried with us into South Carolina’s Top 15 showdown with Clemson in the Upstate on Saturday. Yes, we’d seen the Gamecocks win five in a row, watched them go undefeated in November, gazed with slack-jawed awe as LaNorris Sellers and the defense kept making decisive plays to win ballgames against quality SEC opponents.

It felt to all of us like this team was different.

But if the same story got told one more time on the wretched turf of Clemson’s Memorial Stadium, beneath the shadow of that ridiculous rock at the top of the hill, then those old doubts would still be festering, lingering, ready to come creeping back.

Would it ever change?

In one breathtaking 10-second run, it did.

And now it feels like everything has changed. We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that the way things are is the way they’ve always been and always will be, and yet the singular fact of life in this world is this: Everything changes, nothing lasts forever, and history is not destiny.

Everything changes.

Things fall apart, but things get put back together, too.

The evidence of that is right in front of my eyes every single day. I live in a city that was burnt to the ground and lay in smoldering ashes and yet in 2024 is the glittering capital of the South, a national transportation hub and the cornerstone of one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in America.

When Shane Beamer took the reins of South Carolina football at the end of 2020, he encountered a program that lay in smoldering ashes, too. And if you have watched the steady rise of Beamer’s program over the last few years, you have been confronted with the same question again and again, rubbing up against your doubts, your fears, your lifelong sense of doom.

Do you believe things can change?

I do.

And after we watched South Carolina rise from the dead one more time this season against the team that has tormented Gamecock fans for more than a century to complete what is arguably the most remarkable campaign in the program’s history, we all do.

For most of the day, it looked like we were watching the same old story unfold.

But the same old story has been absent from South Carolina football for nearly two months now. The story is being rewritten right in front of us. Our doubt, our sense of doom…all of it dissipated in the air above Memorial Stadium when Demetrius Knight picked off Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik with the Tigers driving towards a winning score, and the orange-clad masses sat stunned, silent, dejected, their blank, vacant faces looking just like ours have so often looked at the end of these rivalry games.

Do you believe things can change?

You do now. And I do, too.

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The LaNorris Sellers Game Balls of the Week

When you race for a rivalry-shaking winning touchdown on third-and-16 with a minute to go in the fourth quarter to complete an undefeated November and single-handedly change the narrative about South Carolina football, chances are you’re going to get the weekly Game Balls named after you, so let’s get right into it…

LaNorris Sellers – South Carolina’s freshman quarterback is getting dangerously close to Michael Vick territory at this point, when an athlete is capable of changing the course of a game completely in one fell swoop.

It’s hard to imagine just how frustrating Saturday’s game must have been to watch for Clemson fans, who saw their defense largely contain Sellers and the Gamecock offense for much of four quarters, only to glance up at the scoreboard at the end and realize they’d lost the football game.

Over the last few games, Sellers has slowly morphed into one of those weapons who can score at any time, from anywhere and under any circumstances. He’s never down until he’s down.

These kinds of terrifying players always seemed to be suiting up for other teams during my decades of Gamecock fandom. Now one stands under center for South Carolina.

That Sellers committed multiple turnovers and yet still led his team to victory should be an even more frightening fact for our opponents: He’s the kind of player who can have a largely substandard game and still deliver a victory. Speaking of which…

Resilience, Toughness, Fortitude – These are the kinds of words that get plastered onto locker room walls or that are preached by strength and conditioning coaches during the dog days of winter workouts. Often enough, football teams talk about these characteristics so much that they lose meaning.

But this particular South Carolina team actually puts them into action. They just won’t go quietly into that good night. Though they’ve mixed in a few dominant performances, for the most part they’ve been tested relentlessly this season, found themselves knocked to the mat and rose up to keep fighting – don’t forget, they were losing to Texas A&M, Missouri and Clemson at one point or another. Which leads me to…

Winning Without the “A Game” – A few of South Carolina’s recent wins are of the type that genuinely demonstrate how far the program has come in Beamer’s fourth season at the helm. They can take your best shot and still beat you, even without an “A Game.”

Missouri – an upper-tier SEC team that has spent the entire season in the Top 25 – played about as well as it could play against the Gamecocks, particularly on offense. It wasn’t enough.

On Saturday, Clemson’s offense moved the ball for much of the day, and its defense kept the Gamecocks almost completely under wraps while South Carolina’s O lost the turnover battle. Your final: South Carolina 17, Clemson 14.

For years, I’ve watched Gamecock teams seemingly outplay their opponents, only to come up short on the scoreboard. Everything changes.

Demetrius Knight – A rivalry game-sealing interception will get you a Game Ball. And let’s also toss one to…

Most of the Gamecock Defense Running the Length of the Field in Ecstasy After the Interception to Silence the Clemson Crowd – That was fun. On the sidelines, Shane Beamer joined in the impromptu sprinting session, too. Speaking of Shane…

Shanevember Perfection – Beamer is now a crisp 13-4 in November as South Carolina’s coach, including a perfect 5-0 in November ’24. When you’re playing your best football at the end of the year, you are definitely rewriting the narrative of Gamecock football.

Dabo Swinney’s South Carolina Problem – Clemson fans often talk about Dabo Swinney “owning” South Carolina, but the numbers just don’t support the claim. Did you know that the greatest Clemson football coach in history is now barely above .500 in his career against the Gamecocks, with a record of 9-7 during his tenure? Swinney has now lost to South Carolina more times than almost any Clemson coach in that program’s history.

The “This is Our State” Video – Was making the social media rounds after Saturday’s win. No doubt about it, that one definitely makes my eyes feel a little watery. I’m not even on social media anymore, and even I’m aware of the excellent job South Carolina’s creative team does in filling out its socials at moments like this. For maybe the first time in my life, it feels like it’s universally cool to be a South Carolina fan. Speaking of which…

The National Media Representing for Gamecock Football – A media lovefest? For South Carolina? What is happening here? Just about every national college football analyst you can find is now beating the drum for the Gamecocks to make the College Football Playoff. Everything changes, indeed.

And now it feels like everything has changed for South Carolina football.

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Sure, it would still be a tall order for this team to make the College Football Playoff. There’s still a logjam at the top, and the Gamecocks had three losses by mid-October. But friends, we’re now in December. A wild, indescribable regular season is now in the books. And South Carolina is still very much alive for Playoff contention.

We watched the Gamecocks walk away from Tuscaloosa at 3-3, and it felt like a familiar story of adversity and struggle was underway. It felt like we’d be this close to breaking through, this close to changing the old storyline, only to fall short in the end yet again.

Six games later, we are still standing – alive, well and an intimidating fact of life for whoever who plays us next.

In the end, this story had a different ending, a happier one.

Everything has changed.

Our doubts, our doom, our lifelong desperation vanished like a puff of smoke after one 10-second run that dropped in front of us like a dream. And now the eyes of the world are upon us.

Maybe we’ll be in that final 12 and maybe we won’t.

But no one – no team in any of the conferences across the vast landscape of college football – wants to play these South Carolina Gamecocks. Let’s watch this story unfold.

Tell me how you’re feeling after South Carolina’s breathtaking rivalry win by writing me at [email protected].

[See what other Gamecock fans are saying about the Clemson game on The Insiders Forum!]