Scott Davis: South Carolina erases Clemson and erases history
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.
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a pair of vultures.
It was the Saturday morning of the South Carolina-Clemson game, and my wife and I were driving back to Georgia after a week of Thanksgiving revelry with our families in our home Palmetto State.
We were somewhere in a lost rural stretch – somewhere between Due West and Belton, and not too terribly far from Clemson’s Memorial Stadium, where the Gamecocks and Tigers would later be getting together – when I spotted them. Atop a long-abandoned and wrecked roadside barn, two fat turkey buzzards hovered on the roof, casting dark glares at our car as we sped by.
I shivered. “You think that’s an omen for today?” I asked my wife, who was already groaning.
Clemson-South Carolina, the Palmetto Bowl, the rivalry renewed, and here I was, eyeing a couple of vultures and half-expecting to glance at the road stretching in front of us and see a black cat wander across our path.
This is what it’s like to be me on the morning of a Carolina-Clemson game. Perhaps you can relate.
Like many longtime Gamecock fans, I often see darkness ahead when the Clemson game approaches, see portents of doom and signs of the apocalypse at hand. It’s possible – very possible – to love this school and this team with all your heart and all your soul and yet still be scarred by the memories, by all that we’ve seen and felt during all of those games at the end of the year every season.
If you’ve been here awhile, you’ve been here for all of it: The Push-off, 63-17, the Fight, First-and-35, ex-Gamecock coach Brad Scott being carried off the field on the shoulders of victorious Tigers. You’ve been bedeviled by Whitehurst and Deshaun and Trevor, by Ford and Hatfield and Bowden and (deep breaths) Dabo.
You’ve watched that team from the Upstate win multiple national championships, watched as the national college football media mystifyingly fell under the spell and joined the Cult of Dabo. You’ve wondered how they were doing it. And after 2014 and Steve Spurrier’s slow fade into the sunset, you started wondering if your own school would ever break through against them again.
So much history piling up on your shoulders, so much of it painful.
As a Gamecock fan, these are the things you carry.
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I grew up in Upstate South Carolina. And if you grow up a South Carolina fan, all too often you feel under attack within the borders of your own home state. It’s the strangest feeling you can have, feeling unwelcome in your own home. Georgia fans don’t feel this way. Tennessee fans don’t feel this way. But South Carolina Gamecock fans far too often have.
I can recall – with a pit in my stomach – Thanksgiving gatherings from more than three decades ago, when Clemson-loving uncles and cousins hovered nearby, cackling about the ineptitude of the University of South Carolina. “It’s a loser’s school!” one of them shouted (and I can still remember exactly what his voice sounded like). “Don’t know why anybody would have anything to do with it! It’s a loser’s school.”
You probably have memories like this of your own.
And if you’re from this state and you love its flagship university and you believe in it and understand what makes it special, that’s the unfortunate history you bring with you every time these two teams get together in November. You remember all of it – all the jokes and all the jibes and all the snide comments and all the cackling, all the times you felt you were being patronized and put in your place.
You remember that feeling of loving something with all your heart and knowing that so many people around you don’t understand that love at all and don’t want to understand it.
You remember all of it.
And all of this is the very history that Shane Beamer has made it his mission to erase since he became the head football coach at South Carolina.
After Saturday’s thrilling, come-from-behind 31-30 victory on the road at No. 8 Clemson, I’m just about ready to consider history burnt to the ground forevermore.
This was the type of game that so many South Carolina teams of so many years past would have lost, perhaps convincingly. This is the type of game we have watched get away from our team year after year against Clemson, the kind filled with astonishing miscues, terrible luck, hideous officiating gaffes, bursts of momentum that were immediately snuffed out and sucked into the vortex.
Year after year, we’ve watched Clemson save its very best effort for the last game of the season, and South Carolina save its worst.
Didn’t it seem we were headed there again? The first points of Saturday’s contest came on a kick-to-the-privates Pick Six by Clemson, and as the volume rose at Memorial Stadium and the orange-clad masses hollered, you could feel the nausea welling, feel yourself sinking into that old familiar quicksand – at least if you’re like me.
Instead, history itself sank into quicksand and was sucked into the vortex.
Three hours later, history was dead, hallelujah and hell yeah.
History was dead, and all the jokes and jibes and smug, sanctimonious comments were buried with it. And for those fans like me who are always glancing around for the sight of vultures, it may be time to leave history behind, where it belongs.
History is dead: South Carolina 31- Clemson 30.
All hail the future.
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The Shane Beamer Game Balls of the Week
Beamer has spoken again and again of his vision for what this program can be – not what it has been.
Scarred veterans like me have heard those words, and we have wanted, so desperately, to believe. We have wanted to believe.
But the doubts have lingered, like they always do. Didn’t we follow up that program-defining, stadium-shaking win against Texas A&M by laying an egg against middling Missouri? Didn’t the bottom fall out down in Gainesville against an up-and-down Florida squad that would finish the year at 6-6?
After the Gamecocks utterly dismantled a previously terrifying Tennessee last week, many fans – including this one – weren’t quite comfortable embracing the moment. Which team would show up in Clemson on Saturday – the one from the Georgia game or the one from the Tennessee game?
But we wanted to believe. Here’s what I wrote in my column from the Tennessee game last week: “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.” A week and one rivalry win later, history has been dealt a crippling blow, which is why our first Game Ball goes to…
Shane Beamer – Gamecock fans quickly embraced the enthusiastic, upbeat Beamer when he returned to Columbia as head coach in late 2020. His positive outlook, smiling face and youthful exuberance was the medicine that this beleaguered fan base needed after a grim few years in which we watched the program drop into a black hole.
Even if the wins hadn’t immediately followed, we knew we held a special place in our hearts for this coach. He felt like one of us. For the first time perhaps in my lifetime, it seemed like we had a coach who actually understood us, who knew what Gamecock fans needed and when we needed it.
Wins helped, too. In Year One, Beamer’s team took down Florida and Auburn – two teams that had absolutely tormented South Carolina fans over the years – and won a bowl game in dominating fashion. In Year Two, the Gamecocks obliterated the respective Kentucky and A&M Curses, then rolled up a Top 10 Tennessee. So far, so good.
But we all know you eventually have to defeat the Clemson Tigers if you’re going to establish yourself for the long haul around here. We just weren’t sure when it would happen, what with Clemson’s near-annual appearances in the College Football Playoff and head-scratching penchant for recruiting wins.
When it happened this soon, in Year Two, against a top-10 Tiger team fighting to return to the playoffs yet again, Beamer’s first words in his postgame press conference were for the fans. “I know how important this game was to so many people in this state,” he said. “I’m just so happy for our fans.”
I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve wanted to hear a Gamecock head football coach say something – anything – like this: “I’m just so happy for our fans.” If you’re like me, you watched that press conference and thought, “That dude right there is my (bleep)ing football coach.” This was the kind of win that forever fuses the relationship between a coach and his fans.
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Resiliency – We have to acknowledge it again: How many times have we seen Gamecock teams fold up the tents and slink into oblivion in adverse situations like the one they faced Saturday? This team just wouldn’t go away. Speaking of resiliency…
Spencer Rattler – The Gamecock quarterback somehow shook off two of the most devastating turnovers any player could ever experience (the aforementioned Pick Six, followed by an interception in the end zone after the Gamecocks had connected on a long bomb that placed them at Clemson’s six-inch line) to eviscerate the Tiger secondary in the second half. Rattler finished a robust 25-for-39 for 360 yards and two touchdowns. I said it last week and I’ll say it again: No matter what happens next, he’s etched his name into Gamecock lore forever with these two performances. God bless the Transfer Portal, and on that note…
The Transfer Portal – Transfer receiver Juice Wells had nine catches, 131 yards and two touchdowns. He is now and forever a Tiger Killer. And so is transfer tight end Nate Adkins, who had four catches for 62 yards and forced a fumble on the day. Adkins’ one-handed grab on a laser from Rattler will live in the hearts of every Gamecock fan everywhere for all time.
The Gamecock Secondary – Marcellas Dial’s fourth-quarter interception helped lock up the victory for South Carolina, whose defense swallowed Clemson’s passing attack alive. Tiger quarterback DJ Uiagalelei endured one of the most memorably difficult days in rivalry history with an 8-for-29, 99-passing-yard day that seemed to get worse with every passing moment.
BEAMER BALL!!!! – Exuberant fans chanted “Beamer Ball” after the victory as the smiling coach tried to conduct his postgame press conference on the field. Meanwhile, the sterling special teams play that is the hallmark of Beamer Ball was again special. Punter Kai Kroeger flipped the field so many times they need to rename the playing turf at Memorial Stadium after him as he boomed multiple 50+-yard punts and pinned the Tigers back near the goal line on several occasions.
This is Our State – Shortly after the victory, the Gamecock Football social media accounts unveiled this video, which quickly began to be passed around by fans across the state. All the feelings that I hold in my chest when I watch South Carolina football were activated when I watched the video, and I won’t say whether or not I held back a sob while it played. I will say that we all should be proud of the work that Justin King and everyone involved in creating these clips are doing for South Carolina’s athletic programs. There’s not a better creative media team in college athletics.
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Deflated Balls
We could spend plenty of time here if we wanted to, what with some strange officiating, some gruesome turnovers, a “was he actually down or not?” safety, South Carolina’s struggling run defense, South Carolina’s struggling rushing attack and more. But I have just one Deflated Ball to hand out today, and that’s to…
The Bachelor – ESPN/ABC analyst, former Bachelor and current host of “The Bachelor” Jesse Palmer drew the ire of Shane Beamer when he suggested on a pregame program that Clemson needed to try running up the score against South Carolina to improve its chances for getting back in the College Football Playoff. “I heard Jesse Palmer on TV last night, and I love Jesse,” Beamer said. “But he said Clemson needs a big win to impress the committee. Clemson needed to worry about winning the football game.”
If I’m being honest, I must admit that I didn’t think Palmer’s comments were that big of a deal. But you know what? I’m glad Shane Beamer did. In fact, let’s change this whole thing from a Deflated Ball to another Game Ball, this time to…
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Game Balls, Part Two!
Shane Beamer, Clapback King – Since becoming head coach at South Carolina, Beamer has consistently displayed a trait that every great winner – from Michael Jordan on through Taylor Swift – has displayed. He remembers every slight, every doubter and every single solitary snub, however insignificant it may seem to those of us on the sidelines. And he’s made sure to punish the doubters and haters after he’s vanquished them, too.
Remember Jordan in the great ESPN documentary “The Last Dance,” recalling every perceived insult he’d ever received (even after he’d won six NBA titles and multiple MVP awards)? Winners thrive on doubts and feast on hate. They need that fuel to succeed. And thus far, Beamer has feasted on haters with gusto in his role as head coach at South Carolina.
While the rest of us watched with bewilderment as Kentucky coach Mark Stoops inexplicably called out Beamer’s “stupid sunglasses and dancing” during an SEC Media Days interview, Beamer was quietly letting that moment burrow deep down within his core so that he could revisit it during the season. And revisit it he did, by donning sunglasses and dancing in the locker room after the Gamecocks defeated Kentucky in Lexington earlier this season.
After the Clemson game, he rejected the notion that South Carolina’s resurrection is “a feel-good story.” Instead, he said their last-season surge was a reflection that they’ve simply been a better team than the Top 10 programs they’ve defeated (my favorite part of his comments about Palmer was the withering “and I love Jesse” aside).
On Saturday night, Beamer Tweeted the hand-waving emoji at a screenshot of every College GameDay analyst picking Clemson against the Gamecocks before the game, then posted a photo of the Palmetto Bowl trophy in his den.
Why is he is doing these things? I think it’s because – like the rest of us – he understands the history of this program. He understands that the national sports media (when it has noticed South Carolina football at all) has either scoffed at our university and buried it amongst the forgotten and the forlorn, or it has patted it on the head as a “cute little story” whenever the Gamecocks have intermittently found success.
He understands that Clemson coaches, players and fans expect to own the state of South Carolina until the end of time. He understands that Gamecock fans – like me – often see doom lying in the distance, and that we need a mindset reboot. He understands that SEC competitors expect little from his team.
And he understands that all of that history must be erased for something new to be born.
Well, haters and doubters beware: Something new has been born.
And November 26, 2022, is the birthday.
South Carolina 31, Clemson 30. History has been erased.
All hail the future.
Tell me what you think about the future of the South Carolina football program by writing me at [email protected].
