Scott Davis: Black Hole

Chris Gillespie

GamecockCentral.com columnist Scott Davis, who has followed USC sports for more than 30 years, provides commentary from the perspective of a Gamecocks fan. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @scdonfire.

I wore black on Saturday night.

I knew better, but I did it anyway.

I didn’t have to do it – I was watching the game at home, just over 200 miles away from Williams-Brice Stadium in Atlanta. No one would have known if I’d skipped the Blackout Heard ‘Round the World and just settled in for Gamecocks-Wildcats in my trusty green Pinehurst Golf Course T-shirt.

But I would have known.

And I wanted to forge some kind of connection with my people, the ones who were there in Columbia waving towels and bouncing to 2001 and creating a black sea for what we kept hearing was the largest crowd of difference-making recruits ever to assemble in Williams-Brice.

And to prove that I was past all that idiotic superstitious hoo-ha that plagued me as a Gamecock fan in my younger days, I dug deep in my dresser drawer and dug out a shirt that has represented a type of fashion Ebola virus for years: It is pitch black, and at the top it says “Black Magic” in white letters, with a picture of a skull and crossbones beneath it. It has forever been a cursed piece of clothing, and I was going to redeem it.

I bought it at a Greenville sports shop in November 2001, the day before South Carolina played Florida with the SEC East on the line.

That, of course, was the game that has been known since as “The Blackout Game” – a game won by Steve Spurrier’s bloodthirsty Gators to the ugly tune of 54-17. It was the game that became a lasting nightmare in South Carolina lore, one that told the story of the fatal dangers of getting our hopes up, of giving in and believing in this team, this program, this university, this state.

I was a kid the last time I wore that shirt. I’m anything but a kid now. But the results for South Carolina football look and feel mighty familiar.

Just as in that Florida game from so long ago, South Carolina’s fans, players, coaches and administrators hyped this Kentucky game to an almost painful degree. We needed this. All week long we heard it: Wear black, get there early, get loud, believe. And we did. The team stormed the field, 2001 was blaring and the house was full and the people were standing and they were all in black and – just like against Spurrier’s Gators – the Gamecocks took an early lead and the building was on the verge of coming apart and then…quickly, methodically and without much fanfare, everything collapsed.

Kentucky 23 – South Carolina 13, with the Wildcats leading for much of four quarters.

Looking back on it now, it’s so obvious how desperate this fan base was to have something to cheer about. After everything that has happened the last few years (Spurrier resigning at mid-season to head to the golf course, losing to The Citadel, 3-9, 56-7, striking out on high-profile coaching candidates, watching as Clemson morphed from “the team that loses to its archrival five years in a row” to the most elite program in college football), we needed something – anything – to believe in.

I even bought in, and I’ve been watching this program for 35 years and know there’s always another shoe waiting to drop. Remember me climbing on a high horse just like last week in this column and urging all Gamecock fans to forget the past, wear black and believe in something? Yeah.

I believed South Carolina would beat Kentucky and do it soundly, at home in front of an ecstatic crowd, because I believe that every now and then, something just needs to happen. Something needs to happen and the universe takes notices and makes it happen.

South Carolina needed to make a statement Saturday night, to show the world that what happened the last few years – and the last few decades – didn’t need to happen forever, that there can always be a better future as long as you believe it’s possible.

Well, we believed, and there was a loud statement made on Saturday night, but it wasn’t the one we all wanted to hear.

As the game wore on, Williams-Brice looked less and less like a black sea of frothing fanatics and more like a black hole.

A black hole, defined by Wikipedia as being “a region of spacetime exhibiting such gravitational effects that nothing can escape from inside it.”

Sometimes that’s what it feels like to be a Gamecock fan.

It feels like gravity.

You can’t escape from it.

The Deebo Samuel Large Pepperoni Pizza Game Balls of the Week

Despite the loss and its all-around ugliness, the evening’s darkest moment came when Samuel – Carolina’s single elite player and only offensive game-changer – crumpled to the turf in the fourth quarter with a leg injury that looked gruesome to behold on replay. Just after the game, Coach Will Muschamp announced that our hero was done for the season with a broken leg. A few hours later, both Samuel and his mother clarified on Twitter that he had an ankle fracture and could return in five or six weeks. As I write this, his fate is still unknown. Either way, it’s a devastating result for a young man who could rightfully claim to have carried the Gamecocks on his back in 2017. Considering that he was well on his way to being taken with a high pick in next year’s NFL Draft and that this could cast doubt on his future in football, it’s crushing, cruel and unfair. When things like this happen, I sometimes can’t help but wonder why I follow this sport. For the rest of us, losing a game like this stings, hurts our pride and disappoints us for five seconds or so, but it quickly fades and real life returns. For players like Samuel, football (and what it could mean to his future and his family) is his life. Godspeed to…

Deebo Samuel – I don’t know where the Gamecocks would be without him thus far, but we’re about to find out where they’re going. Samuel comprised the entirety of USC’s offense in the first half, taking a short pass from Jake Bentley on the first play from scrimmage and racing 68 yards for a touchdown, because that’s what Deebo Samuel does. He had five catches for more than 100 yards when his ankle buckled under a Kentucky player in the fourth quarter. Not knowing a fracture had occurred, this guy actually hobbled to the sideline, had the ankle taped and returned for a few plays before finally heading to the locker room. It’s hard to even think about it without getting chills, or feeling a powerful sadness. He is a permanent Gamecock legend now. No one who cares about South Carolina will ever forget that.

Bryan Edwards – In Samuel’s absence, the Conway receiver carried the load with five catches for 57 yards. He will be a prime target in the coming weeks, and looks ready to take the mantle.

Mark Stoops for Owning South Carolina While Being Unable to Beat Just About Anyone Else in the SEC – Stoops is now 4-1 against USC. He is 6-23 against everyone else in the Southeastern Conference in his fifth year as Kentucky’s head coach. What that means is that almost half of his SEC wins as a coach have come against your South Carolina Gamecocks. So he’s got that going for him. When you’re a program that has lost four consecutive games to Kentucky in football…you’re a program that has lost four consecutive games to Kentucky in football.

Deflated Balls

We could probably hand these out until next weekend’s game against Louisiana Tech, but instead we’ll try to keep the tally as low as we can and only hand out Deflators to the following elite performers:

Hyping a Game Against Kentucky to the 10,000th Degree and Failing to Be Anything Close to Ready for Prime Time – College football is fueled on hype. But the pitfalls of taking it into the stratosphere were all too obvious Saturday night. The athletic administration spent the entire summer fixating on this Kentucky game as some sort of grand stage for unveiling the “new” Williams-Brice Experience. We’ve got a DJ!!! And columns of fire roaring when the team comes out!!!! And awesome videos!!!! And we’re wearing all black!!! And…it all fell flat from the very beginning, when just one of the four fire columns actually fired during the team’s entrance. Watching from home, I didn’t notice the DJ that much except for the multiple shots of Kentucky’s players bobbing to the music, both on the sidelines and on the field. So we did manage to hype the Wildcats up, which is something, I guess. Listen, I actually like all this ancillary stuff. I really do. I loooooove hype videos – heck, I’ve almost broken into tears watching a few of them. Unlike many crotchety old Gamecocks, I genuinely like and want to have a DJ in the stadium. I like the mic man who gets the crowd rocking before the game. I love the Rooster Crow sound effect and am fine with playing it after every down. But just as with the football team, if you sell yourself this hard for weeks before a game against freaking Kentucky, then you better be ready to perform. It’s a results business, man.

Whatever Happened With the Captains Before the Pregame Coin Toss – I wasn’t on the field, so I have no idea what, exactly, happened here, but Kentucky’s Stoops told the media that our captains refused to shake the hands of the Wildcats who met them at midfield for the pregame coin toss as some sort of “intimidation tactic.” If that’s true, that sums up every single thing that was wrong with our school’s approach to this football game: All talk, no results. That is a bad, bad look for our football team if it did go down that way. South Carolina isn’t close to being good enough for this kind of nonsense, and even if they were, it’s just the wrong thing to do. Let’s see if we can go 7-5 or something before we trot out the “intimidation tactics” again, OK?

The Kicking Game – Where have you gone, Elliott Fry? Having a good kicking game is a little like oxygen – you don’t really notice it until you don’t have it anymore. South Carolina scored on the first play from scrimmage and then botched the ensuing extra point (I’ll freely admit that something inside my soul told me this game wasn’t going to happen as soon as that occurred), and sailed wide left, wide right and wide everything on three other field goal attempts. The Gamecocks finally just started going for it on fourth downs instead of trying field goals, but that didn’t work either. Which leads us to…

Short Yardage Nightmares – Desperately needing a touchdown to cling to life late in the game, USC got stuffed on fourth-and-goal from the four-inch line to turn the ball back over to Kentucky and all but seal the contest. Earlier in the game, they faced second-and-two and failed to pick up a first down on three consecutive runs-up-the middle. Which leads us to…

Whatever Remains of South Carolina’s Running Game in 2017 – I’m not sure there is one right now. Twelve carries for a meager 54 yards. An inexplicable zero carries for running back Ty’Son Williams, who merely helped to close out the Missouri game with several nail-in-the-coffin runs last week. If you absolutely have to have a yard, or even a few millimeters, from this Gamecock running game, you’re not going to get it right now. Blame the offensive line, blame the backs, blame the playcalling or blame all three, but it’s just not happening at the moment.

Third Down Horrors – Time and again, the USC defense stifled UK for two downs only to watch the Wildcats calmly convert a third-and-long and slowly suck away whatever was left of life in Williams-Brice. Kentucky made good on an absurd nine of 16 third down attempts – and it felt like they made good on 9,000. Meanwhile, Carolina went three-for-12 when they absolutely had to pick up a first down to keep the offense afloat and the defense off the field.

“Bend But Don’t Break” Actually Breaks – While the Wildcats only scored 23 points and compiled a little more than 350 yards of total offense, they went 4-for-4 in the red zone. When they got close, they scored. Coach Muschamp mentioned recently that South Carolina “didn’t really mind” opponents getting to the red zone because that’s where the field begins to get small and the Gamecocks could run some things to stop the opposing attack. I don’t know, maybe it’s time to mind opponents getting in the red zone.

Me For Having the Audacity to Wear That Ridiculous Black Shirt from 16 Years Ago – The Football Gods noticed this brazen act of arrogance and punished me accordingly. If it gets any more pathetic than a 44-year-old man wearing a skull and crossbones T-shirt while watching his college team in a chair in his den, I’d love to know how. (Still, I do deserve a miniature Game Ball for still being able to fit into a 16-year-old T-shirt, right?)

Blackouts – Forget every single word I said last week. These have to be permanently banned and never spoken of again. Never again. I’m serious.

If you’re like me, you stomp around the house on Saturday nights after debacles like this, vowing never to be sucked in again. But you will be. So will I.

I woke up on Sunday and it was still football season and inexplicably, I was still happy that it was.

I’ll be sucked in again. You will be, too.

Whether that’s because we’re in a black hole and can’t ever leave, or because like Journey, we just simply can’t stop believin’, I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

Either way, I’ll see you next week. You’ll be there. You may not think it now, but you will.

And so will I.