Scott Davis: These Gamecocks are all business…and business is good

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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If you’re an old-timer like me, you’ve seen the following scenario unfold more times than you can count.

A pretty good South Carolina football team is heavily favored over a smaller in-state opponent. You’re expecting to watch the Gamecocks steamroll their overwhelmed opponents, whose fans have entered Williams-Brice Stadium with a wide-eyed “Wow, we’re playing in an SEC venue!” giddiness.

And then the game begins, and the boys in garnet and black get off to a sluggish start, and the first half floats by without South Carolina roaring ahead, and then you’re well into the fourth quarter and thinking, “This thing hasn’t been decided yet. Why hasn’t this thing been decided yet?

When the end mercifully comes and the Gamecocks have finally pushed ahead and finished the job, you feel like you’ve been to a birthday party and hugged the guest of honor and chatted with your friends, but never got around to eating any cake. The actual celebration never quite arrived.

We’re not talking about those disastrous seasons when South Carolina has actually found itself on the losing end to the likes of The Citadel or Furman. No, we’re talking about those years when solid Gamecock teams finished with a winning record, went to the postseason, and yet struggled to put away an overmatched FCS foe from the Palmetto State

Sound familiar? It should.

Back in 2006, Steve Spurrier’s second team went bowling and defeated Clemson in Death Valley, yet barely squeaked by the Wofford Terriers in a 27-20 nail-biter that ended with Wofford’s offense driving towards a tying score.

In 2010, Spurrier’s Gamecocks won the SEC East and rolled up Alabama but allowed Furman to hang around for an exceedingly long time in a 38-19 win.

The following season, South Carolina set the school record for wins with 11, yet still allowed The Citadel to score 20 points and keep themselves within shouting distance for much of a 41-20 victory.

And if you’re like me, you probably thought you were in for more of the same on Saturday when Wofford came to town and opened up an early lead before staying afloat for much of the first half. You started having visions of the Gamecocks winning a slow-burning grinder by something like a 31-17 score and entering Clemson Week with a little less momentum than they’d had after a thrilling last-second win over Missouri.

And then…that’s exactly what DIDN’T happen.

As they have for much of this unforgettable 2024 season, these Gamecocks continued to show us they’re of a different breed and continued to redefine what all of us believe to be possible for South Carolina football. They shook off that slow start – so familiar to us from the days of old – and promptly turned on the jets to dominate Wofford 56-12 in a game that got worse and worse for the Terriers the longer the second half went on.

Before the game started, I mentioned to my wife the astonishing factoid that South Carolina was favored by a whopping 42.5 points in the game. “If we beat them 42-0, we’ll still fail to cover the spread,” I said, apparently feeling the need to flex my mathematical muscles. That led to a short period of rumination in which we wondered if the Gamecocks had ever been favored by a larger amount in our lifetimes.

When those same Gamecocks carried a 21-9 lead to the locker room at halftime, the chances of them covering that mammoth spread seemed to have dwindled down to insignificance. And yet as the zeros ticked onto the clock in the fourth quarter, there it was – a 56-12 score that was indeed a spread-covering nightmare for the gentlemen from Spartanburg.

Within hours, after absolute anarchy erupted everywhere across college football, South Carolina suddenly found itself in the bewildering position of being in the mix for the College Football Playoff with a game to go in the regular season. A lot would need to happen, including a little more anarchy again, but still…

When the Gamecocks left Tuscaloosa at 3-3 after suffering their second heartbreaker of the season to a historically elite SEC program, did any of us ever imagine that we’d be here right now discussing scenarios and outcomes that might conclude with us watching this team playing for a national championship, not in some distant, hazy future…but right freaking now?

I keep wanting to put into words what we’re all witnessing here…but what exactly are we witnessing?

Will we remember this as the greatest, most rewarding season of South Carolina football ever? Friends, it is still in play. Amazingly, it is all still in play with one game to go.

Do I need to tell you who that next game is against, or where it is being played? Do I need to tell you what is at stake on the final Saturday of November – a November in which South Carolina is currently unblemished and undefeated?

In a year when the Gamecocks have defied our expectations again and again, they did it one more time in a small but important way on Saturday: They simply did what they were supposed to do.

So many times in years past that has not happened, even in the years that we remember fondly.

But this team? This unyielding, uncompromising team?

This team stands on business. This team is all business.

And ladies and gentlemen, right now business is very good for South Carolina football.

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The All-Business Game Balls of the Week

Could it possibly have been less than three months ago when we all convened to start a new season of South Carolina football, only to watch the Gamecocks allllllllllllmost fall to the Monarchs of Old Dominion University in a 23-19 slopfest?

I can’t even believe that happened in my lifetime, much less this very same season. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a South Carolina team grow up and come together so completely as I have over the last six weeks or so. They’ve erased all doubts, met every challenge and drawn new fans in some startling places. Let’s toss some Game Balls to…

Taking Care of Business – With Clemson looming, South Carolina simply needed to emerge from the Wofford game without any new questions or concerns, and to keep the momentum rolling from a thrilling November. Mission accomplished. The Gamecocks rolled up 608 total yards of offense and delivered a second half so overwhelming that they managed to cover one of the most ridiculous point spreads in the program’s history. That’s how you take care of business on Senior Night.

LaNorris Sellers – Another game, another 300+-yard passing night from South Carolina’s QB1, who is slowly emerging as a force through the air. Sellers went 23-for-27 with three touchdowns, proving that his arm is becoming just as important to this offense as his legs.

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A Foundation for the Future – Remember those dark, ugly days when former South Carolina players often denigrated the program – sometimes publicly? Shane Beamer has worked relentlessly to build bridges with former Gamecocks and to create an overall sense of community around the program since he arrived at the end of 2020, and the efforts have begun to pay off.

On Saturday night, former South Carolina quarterback and current New Orleans Saint Spencer Rattler stood on the Gamecock sidelines and cheered on the team, leading Beamer to remark after the game, “It says a lot about the people in this program that Spencer Rattler wanted to come back to Columbia this weekend.” Yes, it does. And what it says is good.

The Ecstasy Surrounding Bradly Dunn’s Touchdown Run – Now this is what Senior Night is all about. Former walk-on Bradley Dunn, who played high school ball at Hammond, got a carry as the final seconds ticked away and turned it into a touchdown run. That prompted most of the entire South Carolina sideline to mob Dunn in a nice little moment that said as much about this program’s tight-knit feeling of togetherness as anything I’ve seen this season.

Nick Saban, Television Analyst – As my wife and I were watching the College GameDay broadcast Saturday morning, we both had the exact same thought at the exact same time: Nick Saban has turned into a surprisingly enjoyable television presence.

In one of the most surprising college football seasons I can ever remember, this might be the most surprising development of all. Saban’s postgame press conferences were legendarily chilly. His performances in television commercials during the last few years were often so wooden they seemed to have emerged from a lumberyard.

But having removed the massive weight of being the coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide from his shoulders, a newly buoyant Saban seems to be having a great deal of fun on the GameDay set, and he’s instantly brought a level of insight and professionalism that the program had been needing. Speaking of the media…

The National College Football Media’s Sudden and Stunning Lovefest with South Carolina Football – Remember all those years we watched the GameDay guys chortling about South Carolina’s ineptitude? It’s not happening anymore, and in fact, it’s part of a larger and quite shocking development that has seen the Gamecocks drawing fans far and wide throughout the college football media.

Analyst after analyst seems to be making a case for South Carolina to make the College Football Playoff should they beat Clemson, which might actually be more surprising than the fact that South Carolina has a chance to make the College Football Playoff. This is a new edition of the Gamecocks indeed.

Chaos – Remember the Joker’s famous speech near the end of “The Dark Knight”? As Gotham City is collapsing around him, the Joker tells us all the secret to his success, saying, “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.”

Chaos erupted on Saturday night, with favorites falling right and left, and amidst the wreckage, none other than your South Carolina Gamecocks are still standing as potential Playoff participants. Let’s introduce a little anarchy to this thing!

[Win two tickets to the South Carolina-Clemson MBB game]

The “I Can’t Think About Deflated Balls When We’re Talking about the College Football Playoff” Deflated Balls of the Week

I mean, do we even need to talk about Deflated Balls right now? Special teams had a tough night. There was that sluggish start. There was an early interception. But you know what? There’s one game left in the season, and the South Carolina Gamecocks are kind of, sort of still alive for the College Football Playoff.

Who can talk about Deflated Balls right now? I know I can’t.

What I can talk about is the fortitude of this football team, a shining, strong-willed determination, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen around here. On a night when it looked to many of us like the Gamecocks might sleepwalk their way toward a monumental showdown in the Upstate, they wound up taking care of business instead.

As anarchy erupts all around them, these Gamecocks are all business.

And there’s still some business left to take care of.

But I didn’t need to remind you of that. And no one will need to remind this team of that, either. The Agents of Chaos are ready to storm the Upstate for another business meeting.

Tell me how you’re feeling as the biggest rivalry game of our lifetimes approaches by writing me at [email protected].

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