Scott Davis: Note to self: Just breathe
Scott has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter (sign up here) year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.
These are the games that try men’s souls.
I’d already predicted it just days earlier. In my weekly newsletter before South Carolina’s Saturday night SEC battle with Mississippi State, I wrote the following chestnut:
“South Carolina is favored against MSU on Saturday, but this is a classic “could-go-either-way” game. As such, it’s the type of game I’ve lived in fear of over the years. Some fans are terrified of playing Alabama. I’m mortified by the Kentuckys, the Mississippi States, the Missouris. Slip-ups in those games have historically kept South Carolina in the middle-of-the-league pack rather than the upper tier. These are the games that tend to threaten my sanity and occasionally my marriage.”
Ah, yes, my sanity.
It’s always pretty fragile, even during January through August. No one would ever call it “robust.” But in football season? Let’s just say I’m not the easiest person to love during football season.
During football season, you have to pretend that I’m a toddler if you plan on interacting with me at all (this is not difficult for my loved ones to do, by the way). You’ve got to keep me distracted on gamedays during the fall, keep my mind steered in the direction of joy and happiness and away from the dark clouds that can tend to roll through my head when South Carolina is getting ready to play a critical SEC game.
Strangely, I fare far better emotionally when South Carolina is gearing up to play a fearsome opponent like Georgia, who I’d watched the Gamecocks lose a hard-fought battle to just a week earlier while displaying admirable stoicism and dignity from the chair in my den at home.
But when our team is playing a difficult game that they are nonetheless expected to win…well, that’s when you have to tiptoe around me. That’s when – if you are unlucky enough to be sitting beside me while the game is going on – you’re probably going to watch me work through all of the Seven Stages of Grief before the midway point of the first quarter.
In recent years, it’s been the Missouri game that has led me towards these existential crises each autumn. Kentucky games, of course, have been sending me into an emotional tailspin for decades. And for whatever reason, I just had a feeling that this very, very important, very, very critical game against the Mississippi State Bulldogs was going to test every last fiber of my resolve.
Look, I think I can share this with you: In the last few years, I’ve become a better South Carolina Gamecock fan, and hopefully a better human being.
I cheer, I support, I praise, I hope.
I don’t – for the most part – whine, sob, scream at referees, question every play call, threaten to hurl my remote control through the picture window in our kitchen, invade message boards or social media with fire-breathing intensity or stalk out of the house during losses for three-hour-long walks designed to help me “find myself.” Mostly, I just watch, cheer, support, praise, hope.
But man…
There’s usually one game on the schedule each year that gets me, that sucks me back down into the black hole, into the vortex. I thought this game against MSU had a chance to be the one. I did. I’ll admit it to you.
And I did everything I could to stave it off. I went with my in-laws to a fall festival at the Farmers Market in Greenville on Saturday morning. I ate a slice of sweet potato cake before the game, even scooping an extra helping of cream cheese icing. I consumed approximately 16 pounds of Halloween candy. I exchanged a series of genuinely delightful text messages with friends in the wake of Clemson’s excruciating loss to Florida State.
Then the game arrived.
And I’m happy to report that despite a rollicking, back-and-forth, good ol’ fashioned SEC war against the Bulldogs, I survived with my sanity, my marriage and my self-respect intact.
Oh, I fidgeted on the couch a little when State kept throwing – and kept connecting – on long bombs for instantaneous touchdowns. I did indeed whimper, very briefly, when the refereeing crew failed to call an obvious pass interference on MSU in the end zone, which would have kept alive a Gamecock drive. And I may, perhaps, have muttered something about a desire to sew shut the mouth of the SEC Network’s Jordan Rodgers at one point during the game, when he repeatedly suggested South Carolina’s interception of all-SEC quarterback Will Rogers should have been overturned.
But I just kept telling myself: Breathe, boy. Just breathe.
And I got through it. And so did South Carolina, 37-30. And like my sanity, this 2023 season is alive, well and on the way to becoming robust.
When it was all over, I turned to my wife, who’d been sitting beside me throughout the game, and smiled. I knew she was proud of me. I knew what she was thinking: Can this person – this calm, easygoing, thoughtful person sitting beside me – really be my husband?
She looked up at me, and I waited anxiously for her praise of my dignified performance. I smiled a big, bright, “We just won an SEC game” smile.
“Oh, now you’re going to be nice to me?” she said. “Now that we won. You’re going to try to act like a normal person again?”
How do we get through 12 of these things every year?
The “Spencer Rattler to Xavier Legette” Game Balls of the Week
“Rattler to Leggette” is becoming one of those legendary combinations like peanut butter and jelly, movie popcorn and butter, Lennon and McCartney, Hansel and Gretel, pizza and pepperoni – pick your favorite combo. In the spirit of “Rattler to Leggette,” let’s hand out a few Game Balls to the following…
Spencer Rattler – Did you think the quarterback might get through an entire game without an incompletion? I was actually starting to entertain the idea. Rattler walked into the locker room at halftime having completed all of the 13 passes he’d thrown to that point. He ended up turning in a genuinely ridiculous 18-for-20 performance for 288 yards and three touchdowns. And like he did last week in Athens, he showed a flicker of Patrick Mahomes-like moves, squirting through collapsing pockets to run for first downs on his own. Back in August, everyone surrounding the program kept whispering that Rattler was getting ready to have his greatest season yet, and we’re watching it happen right now. And it helps that he’s throwing the football to…
Xavier Leggette – Coming into the 2023 season, Leggette had had a few memorable moments as a Gamecock, but was anyone expecting him to morph into one of the most potent weapons in the Southeastern Conference at receiver? That’s exactly what he’s become. Leggette had touchdown receptions of 76 and 75 yards, respectively, and when he and Rattler are on the field at the same time, I believe South Carolina is capable of scoring a touchdown at any given moment.
Mario Anderson – It was clear – crystal clear – that South Carolina wanted to establish some kind of running game in this contest. They kept feeding Anderson the ball for most of four quarters Saturday, and the transfer from Newberry made the most of the opportunity by grinding for 88 yards on 26 carries and a touchdown. Most of the yardage came on tough, bruising, SEC-caliber rushes through a thick MSC defensive front.
Pressure – Mississippi State’s terrifying quarterback Will Rogers lifted himself into third place on the all-time SEC passing yards list Saturday night with a 487-yard explosion that occasionally did threaten my sanity. Still, his battered body will remember what Williams-Brice Stadium’s turf feels like. The Gamecock defense harassed and hammered Rogers throughout the evening, collecting four sacks and generally making the quarterback pay for every throw he made.
Me Rediscovering My Love for Hating the Clemson Tigers – I’ll admit, I’ve gotten a little soft living in Atlanta over the last decade. I hate Clemson – that’s a given – but living somewhere other than South Carolina has a way of making a person slowly forget just how insufferable Tiger fans can be. Saturday morning, though, I awoke at my in-laws’ home in Greenville and went out for a brisk walk, and at nearly every house I passed, I encountered an assortment of intense orange-clad heathens packing up their cars to head over for Clemson’s noon matchup with Florida State. None of these unsmiling folks radiated friendliness or even humanity. I felt that old, dark pit opening wide inside my stomach every time I passed a new group of them. And when Clemson’s last-ditch, fourth-down effort in overtime fell to the turf to secure their second loss this season, I will admit to feeling an unsurpassed level of delight that surprised me a little. Then my phone started dinging with memes, jokes and other jolly reminders that the Tigers would not be finding themselves anywhere near the College Football Playoff in 2023.
South Carolina-Mississippi State Deflated Balls
I mean, even in victory, there were some tough moments on Saturday night, yeah? Yeah! Like…
Me Squirming in Agony on the Couch Every Time Rogers Threw in the Direction of Lideatrick Griffin – Griffin spent much of Saturday evening running free behind the South Carolina secondary, and Rogers kept finding him for agonizingly long bombs while the announcing crew kept cheerfully saying things like, “These are the most explosive plays Mississippi State has collected in a single game in the last 20 years!” or “Mississippi State had just four plays of more than 40 yards in all of last season…and they already have three tonight!”
My Sanity – It was hanging by a thread, and that thread may or may not have snapped at some point in the fourth quarter.
Jordan Rodgers’ Strange Obsession With Overturning a South Carolina Interception – I’ve historically enjoyed the work of the SEC Network’s Rodgers, who tends to provide analysis during games with insight and without hyperbole or opinionated rants. But he committed the classic announcer sin on Saturday night when he staked out a position early (in this case, that the interception by South Carolina’s David Spaulding should be overturned), then kept riding for his opinion even as the replays and the SEC Network’s own replay booth suggested the interception was going to stand. I’ve never quite understood why announcers are incapable of the following sentence: “You know what? Now that I look at the replay, I think I was wrong about that.” They can’t do it. Rodgers kept talking about the play even as the Gamecock offense was on the field preparing to start its own drive, eventually leading me to shout at the screen, “They reviewed the play, dog! Move on!” That actually happened.
That Sequence at the End of the First Half That Included South Carolina Trying and Failing on a Two-Point Conversion, Followed by Mississippi State Missing a Long Field Goal as Time Expired, Followed by the Referees Awarding Them With a Second FG Try on a Questionable Call, Followed By Them Making That Second Try – Have I mentioned my sanity was hanging by a thread?
In the end, the Gamecocks had secured a thrilling win under the lights at Williams-Brice, and the 2023 season was still alive, and the Tennessee Volunteers were awaiting us in Knoxville.
Tennessee.
Yes, the SEC never sleeps. The relentlessness never stops. Week after week after week.
We know what to do: Just breathe.
Just breathe.
Tell me what you thought about South Carolina’s win by writing me at [email protected].
