Scott Davis: Hollywood ending? There's still some story left to write
Scott Davis has followed the South Carolina football program for more than 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective each Monday during the season. Scott also writes a weekly newsletter that’s emailed each Friday; sign up here to receive it.
It was a scene out of a movie.
The Williams-Brice Stadium turf was so jammed with ecstatic humanity that ESPN’s cameras kept having to pull out to an aerial shot of the old ballpark on George Rogers Boulevard, the better to capture the size and immensity of the spectacle.
South Carolina had just overwhelmed No. 5 Tennessee, and the Gamecock faithful poured onto the field to engulf the players and coaches in an unexpected celebration. First, the students stormed across whatever flimsy obstacles held them back from getting to midfield, then just about everyone else in the stadium followed suit. Before long it seemed like the entire state of South Carolina was surrounding Coach Shane Beamer and his joyous players.
ESPN’s Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit – the original College GameDay guys, with whom many South Carolina fans have maintained a rather complicated relationship over the years – were on hand to broadcast the game, and both seemed genuinely at a loss for words to describe the moment.
The cameras kept hovering over the mob, followed by stunned silence in the booth, and then Fowler or Herbstreit would stammer something like, “Wow. This is…wow.” And then the other one would mutter, “I mean…what a scene. This is spectacular. Can you believe this?” And then the other would say something like, “I’ve never seen anything…college football…I mean…wow.”
For once, I sympathized with the ESPN team. How would you describe this scene?
Meanwhile, the unthinkable score just kept sitting there at the bottom of my television screen: South Carolina 63, Tennessee 38.
This wasn’t just a shocking victory by South Carolina. This was a straight-up murder scene. This was capital punishment of a 9-1, Top-5 program whose only loss this year had come on the road to top-ranked Georgia. This was an unequivocal evisceration of a team that had dismantled SEC West champion LSU, and defeated Nick Saban and Alabama.
Sixty-three points.
By these South Carolina Gamecocks. Wow, indeed.
You want to be wowed? That sixty-three was the highest point total Tennessee had surrendered in its long history of SEC competition – ever – outdoing even the 62 points that Steve Spurrier’s Florida Gators hung on the Vols back in the ‘90s.
The moment was breathtaking for anyone who’d watched the Gamecocks struggle offensively for much of 2022. We’d seen nothing – not a single thing – from South Carolina this season that indicated this was even possible, much less what was in store for us when we filed into the stadium or settled into our favorite chairs in front of a TV on Saturday night.
No one saw this coming. Not this. (And if you say you did, trust me: You didn’t).
Watching the raucous party from my den in the sleepy Atlanta suburbs, I just kept thinking, “This is a @#%*ing movie.”
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In truth, I’d been thinking about movies all week long.
I’d been thinking about happy endings, about drama, about being swept up in emotion and passion and all the ups and downs of human life. That’s because a few days earlier, my wife and I had finally started watching the Paramount + miniseries “The Offer,” about the making of “The Godfather” back in the early ‘70s.
The movie’s origin story is almost as intriguing as the film itself ended up being. So many obstacles and challenges beset the production that it’s surprising the picture ever ended up getting made. The budget was thin. The mafia didn’t want the movie to happen and tried strongarming the filmmakers into shutting it down. The City of New York didn’t want to cooperate. All kinds of corporate intrigue and undermining was unfolding inside the boardrooms and backrooms at Paramount Pictures. Almost no one seemed to want the unknown theater actor Al Pacino to be involved as Michael Corleone.
Of course, as you watch the story move forward, you already know the ending.
“The Godfather” arrived in theaters just before I was born. That means that I have only ever known it as “one of the greatest movies of all time.” Its troubled backstory no longer exists. All of the challenges and obstacles that plagued the production have vanished into history. If you were born after 1972, your only reality is this: “The Godfather” is one of the most important movies ever made.
Nothing else matters.
Whatever ugliness preceded its premiere is now erased. History itself was erased by the movie’s “Best Picture” win and its unforgettable score and legendary acting and its legacy.
“The Godfather” is and forever more will be “The Godfather” – not a weird, dark, quirky little movie about gangsters and family that no one wanted to make and that almost didn’t get made.
History was erased.
And if – if – Shane Beamer is able to do what we all hope he can do at South Carolina, this may just be the night that history was erased for this program.
All of those offensive struggles this season, all of those strange, sloppy, head-scratching losses to mediocre teams, all of it vanished into the air above Williams-Brice, up there where ESPN’s cameras were looming and recording that unimaginable post-game scene.
And what the hell – there’s still a game left in this season, isn’t there?
There’s still time to make this happy Hollywood ending even happier.
There’s still some story left to write.
In fact, Shane Beamer himself said it all after the game ended Saturday. “We write the story,” he said.
“Everybody thinks they’ve read this book, seen this movie and know how the chapter ends,” Beamer continued. “No, you don’t. I know what that team’s about.”
There’s still some story left to write.
Sharpen your pencils.
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The Spencer Rattler Game Balls of the Week
Typically when the University of South Carolina has secured an important victory or an upset win in any sport during my lifetime, I’m left feeling a profound fluttering in my chest, a feeling of deep relief combined with total joy combined with the janky, caffeinated surge of lingering nervousness. I’m not sure what I felt when the Tennessee smackdown was over, but it wasn’t that. That’s because the Gamecocks won in such a thorough, dominating fashion over a team that had been such a terrifying, powerful plague upon the college football landscape in 2022 that I simply didn’t know how to respond. In an odd way, I was almost pleasantly numb, like I’d sucked on nitrous oxide for the previous three hours.
You know the tired old phrase “Act like you’ve been there before?” I hadn’t been there.
I tried scanning my memory bank for a Gamecock football win in my lifetime that could help instruct me on how to react Saturday night, but I couldn’t find an equivalent to this game. The 2010 win over Alabama seems to have come to mind for many fans, simply because the Crimson Tide had been so dominant coming into that game, but that South Carolina team won the SEC East and played in Atlanta for the league championship and had Marcus Lattimore and Stephen Garcia and Stephon Gilmore and DeVonte Holloman and many other elite athletes roaming its sidelines (and its head coach was Steve Spurrier).
These Gamecocks were coming off a 38-6 loss to a Florida team that lost earlier in the day to Vanderbilt to fall to 6-5. These Gamecocks lost by almost two touchdowns at home to 5-6 Missouri. These Gamecocks were without their best offensive player, who’d been lost to injury. These Gamecocks had begun to make their supporters a little – shall we say – uncomfortable as the Tennessee game approached. And most importantly, these Gamecocks had been tormented by offensive inconsistency since the first quarter of the first game of the ’22 season. That these Gamecocks torched Tennessee in the fashion they did was due in large part to the namesake of this week’s Game Balls. Without further ado, let’s honor…
Spencer Rattler – We all know what Rattler’s been through since he arrived at Oklahoma as a coveted five-star quarterback. After a freshman season with the Sooners in which he lived up to expectations enough to be floated as a Heisman candidate entering his sophomore year, Rattler lost his starting job in Norman and eventually wound up transferring to play for Beamer at South Carolina (in a move that appeared to stun the national college football media). And while Rattler has had his moments while wearing garnet and black for the Gamecocks, the team’s offensive struggles throughout the year left many fans wondering if they’d ever see the quarterback reclaim some of that early magic that had made him a one-time Heisman hopeful.
We have now seen it.
Rattler’s unprecedented 30-for-37, 438-yard, six-touchdown night was among the greatest single-game performances I’ve ever seen a South Carolina athlete deliver in any sport in the 40 or so years I’ve followed this school’s athletic programs. For one night, Rattler was in the realm of Lattimore, Jeffery, Clowney, Sharpe, the realm of McKie, the realm of Wilson, the realm of Roth and Bradley Jr. in Gamecock lore. No matter what else happens with Spencer Rattler at South Carolina, this night happened. And no one can take it away from him. Or from us.
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Marcus Satterfield, Late-Season Lazarus – Just a season removed from rising up out of the ashes to quiet a disgruntled Gamecock Nation with a strong late-year offensive resurgence in 2021, South Carolina offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield somehow again managed to resuscitate his ailing unit the week after they mustered just six measly points in Gainesville. It wasn’t just that the Gamecock offense played well against Tennessee – they delivered a record-setting, history-making performance that defies all rationality and reason. They were often unstoppable, always confident and endlessly creative in ways we haven’t seen since Spurrier wore the headset in Columbia. In some ways, the fact that Satterfield has occasionally been able to oversee offensive explosions like this (and like the one in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl to close the previous season) while also overseeing games like the one in Gainesville last week probably means that we should award this whole development some sort of unholy combined Game Ball/Deflated Ball concoction. But when my team hangs 63 points and six passing touchdowns on Tennessee, I’m giving the offensive coordinator a Game Ball and calling it a day.
Senior Night – Many of the Gamecocks who were honored before the game on Senior Night – including Dakereon Joyner, Josh Vann, Zacch Pickens and others – made important contributions to the win. As Vann said, “This is our last game at Willy B. What a way to go out.” Indeed.
South Carolina-Tennessee Deflated Balls
Should we even do this? After 63 points? After a 25-point win over a Top 5 team and longtime SEC rival? Maybe just a couple, to the following…
The Roller Coaster – Of all people, Herbstreit probably put it best near the end of the game Saturday night when he said the next step for Beamer’s program was to eliminate the roller coaster ride, to start beating the people you should beat and taking care of the business you’re expected to take care of while also mixing in some big wins. Agreed. Roller coasters are fun, but they’re also exhausting and they make me nauseous. I’ve got a weak stomach.
Everything I Did as a Fan After the Dispiriting Blowout Loss to Florida Left Me an Empty Shell – You are going to hear from many, many of your fellow Gamecock fans this week who will tell you that they never gave up the faith, that they absolutely believed this team could beat Tennessee, that they always knew UT’s defense wasn’t particularly stout and that, if things ever clicked, South Carolina could have a good night offensively. You’ll hear from those folks.
Folks, I am not one of those folks.
I didn’t expect South Carolina to win on Saturday night. I most certainly, most assuredly did not expect South Carolina to drop a staggering nine touchdowns on Tennessee.
On Saturday around lunchtime, my wife and I headed out to do a little early Christmas shopping at a packed retail center near where we live in the Atlanta suburbs. At one busy store, I spied a woman wearing a Tennessee Volunteers sweatshirt, and felt a quick stab in the chest. It was a gruesome reminder for me of what awaited in the evening. “Oh man, I’d almost forgotten we had to play them tonight,” I whispered to my wife, who was already nodding in agreement.
I wasn’t looking forward to this game in any way and didn’t even have the typical Saturday morning butterflies in my chest when I awoke to start the weekend. Butterflies? Who needed butterflies? This was Tennessee. The Vols were all the way back, with an offense so potent that my stomach immediately started producing bile every time I had watched them at work in 2022. Meanwhile, the Gamecocks had already appeared to ask for the check on the ‘22 season by no-showing in Gainesville a week ago.
Less than 24 hours after grimacing at the woman in the Vols sweatshirt, I was taking a Sunday morning walk near my neighborhood, wearing my own South Carolina Gamecocks sweatshirt, when I noticed a house with a lonely UT banner flapping in the front yard. I saw the familiar T logo there, along with the outline of the Vols’ coonhound mascot Smokey.
And I smiled.
Smokey? Smoked.
The image from Saturday night came flooding back to me: The jampacked field at Williams-Brice, under the lights, an absolute army of Gamecock fans stretching on forever, surrounding the victorious players and coaches, all of them smiling.
It was a scene from a movie.
And the movie, as Coach Beamer told us after the game, isn’t over yet.
I’m not ready to yell “Cut” just yet. And neither are you.
Tell me how you think this movie ends by writing me at [email protected].
