The Verdict: Carolina’s seniors embody the Gamecock Spirit

South Carolina football superfan and lawyer Chris Paschal writes a column for Gamecock Central called “The Verdict.”

The Verdict: Carolina is building this roster correctly. 

On November 7, 2020, I sat in an empty Williams-Brice Stadium on an unseasonably warm and muggy evening. Carolina was facing what would turn out to be Jimbo Fisher’s best Texas A&M team to date. And it was ugly. Play after play, series after series, quarter after quarter, Carolina got whipped like a dog. Final score: A&M 48, Carolina 3. 

I watched that game with a couple of friends. For one of them, that game happened to be the first college football game she had ever attended. As we were leaving the stadium, this girl leaned over to another friend, pointed at me, and said, “If that’s what it’s like being a Gamecock fan, I don’t want any part of this?”   

I always laugh when I think about that story. Of course, it’s not always like that. The 2021 Auburn muffed punt/video board bonanza will forever be a favorite memory of mine. As will the 2018 Missouri monsoon game or this season’s A&M win. 

But for over five years now, it does feel like Carolina fans have experienced heartbreak after heartbreak. And sprinkled in between those heartbreaks are trounces that make you want to turn the TV off, storm out of the stadium, and swear you will never watch this team again. 

And while a few may not turn that TV on again, and while some may not return to the stadium again, most of us climb those stadium steps or turn the TV on the following weekend. Sometimes out of a desperate hope, sometimes out of unfounded or misguided expectations, and sometimes just out of sheer muscle memory, we return. 

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This season has been a roller coaster of emotions. After this season, I am going to take a few weeks and really dive into this program, what needs to be done/fixed, and the solid foundation I believe it is being built upon. Because the need for a new offensive vision and the need for more defensive depth dominate that conversation to the point of not needing to examine those things this week. 

Instead of yet another post calling for the firing of Marcus Satterfield, or yet another post dissecting how Tennessee is going to kill us, or yet another post debating whether Shane Beamer is gaslighting this fanbase (seriously, I heard that uttered multiple times by pundits that feast on Carolina fans being upset), I want to use this space to talk about the men that will put on the pads one final time in front of the home crowd.  

I have referenced my own personal playing experiences a few times while writing these columns.

No, I never played collegiate football – that should not shock anyone. But like many of you, I spent years playing middle school and high school football.

When I was in 6^th grade, I treated the high school varsity program at my school as if it were Notre Dame or Alabama or the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Dallas Cowboys. Whoever you think the most important brand is in all of football, the 2006 Charlotte Latin varsity football team was an even bigger brand to Chris Paschal in 6^th grade.

By the time I was a high school junior, we had a solid team — winning games and beating our rivals (including a whooping of Will Grier for those of you who remember the former Gator turned WVU Mountaineer). And while I started on the offensive line down the home stretch, and while I was honored as offensive player of the week after beating our archrival, I was still a role player. Junior year was fun, but everything I had dreamed of involved being a team captain my senior season.

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And as a team captain my senior season, we got demolished week after week. Sure, we won the early season games and the homecoming game, but those weren’t the games that mattered. We got smoked in those games. We lost to teams we hadn’t lost to in years. We lost to our archrival by over 20 points. We lost to the state champion by 40 points. We were the bottom seed in the state playoffs, and we lost in the first round to a team that had college football talent littered throughout it. 

My senior season, something I had dreamed of for years, became a nightmare. I dreaded going to practice every day. The games weren’t fun. It was tough looking at my classmates on Friday morning and forcing a “we got a chance” when asked how I thought that evening’s game would go. 

And that was high school football. High school football with hundreds (occasionally thousands) of people watching. High school football where the only TV coverage was at 11:00 PM on the wrap-up show. High school football where nobody went to message boards and talked about how Paschal missed a block or a tackle. 

This Saturday, 20 or more players will play their final game in Williams-Brice Stadium. Beaten, battered, and bruised, these men have gotten up every morning and headed to practice, headed to the gym, and headed to film study.

When A&M won 48-3 in 2020, Darius Rush and Brad Johnson and Dakereon Joyner didn’t have the benefit of nobody caring about their game outside of friends and relatives like I did. No, those guys were on national television. Every Saturday, those guys played in front of eighty or ninety or one hundred thousand screaming fans. They had strangers calling into radio stations questioning their toughness. They had people they have never met posting on message boards that they were soft. 

Yet these guys never quit this program. I’m sure it crossed their minds. I’m sure there were practices where they thought, “Why in the hell am I doing this?” I’m sure there were times they just wanted to lash out at a media member or a reporter or an attorney that writes columns from the safety of his office and tell that person that they don’t have a clue of what all they have been through. 

Instead, they woke up early in the morning, put on their pads, and went to work. Instead, no matter the odds, they spent the week getting their bodies ready for the most physically demanding sport in the most physically grueling conference. And instead of quitting, they represented the best our community has to offer.  

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More so than the wins, nothing gives me chills more than listening to Pickens or Joyner or Greene or any of the others talk about their love for this team and this program and this state.

They had every reason to quit. The pain I felt my senior season pales in comparison to what these guys have endured. The adversity they have gone through is adversity many fellow students couldn’t imagine. But like the Fightin’ Gamecocks that they are, they scratched and clawed their way through some tough times. And they will do it one more time this weekend.

Ahead of what will most likely be another tough game, these seniors will put on the garnet and black and run out behind that South Carolina state flag and battle for 60 minutes. And regardless of the outcome, I hope we all take a moment and recognize the sacrifices made and the loyalty shown by these men. 

These men truly embody “Forever to Thee.”  

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