Scott Davis: Stand up, super men

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round (the following is his most recent) and a column during football season that’s published on GamecockCentral.com. To receive Scott’s newsletter every Friday, sign up here.

A guy you may not have heard much about recently has been back in the news the last couple of weeks.

I’m talking, of course, about Superman.

After lying dormant for the better part of a decade while Marvel’s heroes dominated the box office, the Man of Steel is back and seemingly more super than ever. A new Superman movie hit theaters last week and proceeded to smash all expectations, suddenly resetting expectations for the struggling DC Comics universe.

Superman clothing and toys are beginning to creep back up on retail shelves. And HBO Max is even commemorating the moment by highlighting the Superman movies from the ’70s and ’80s starring the late Christopher Reeve.

When I was growing up in the early ‘80s, my favorite movie – other than, strangely, “Jaws” – was “Superman II,” which for my money stands behind only Christopher Nolan’s unforgettable “Dark Knight” as the greatest superhero movie of all time.

If you’ve forgotten, here’s a quick refresher: Superman actually loses his powers in this movie. I’m not kidding. He voluntarily gives them up in order to become a normal human being and marry his longtime love, Lois Lane.

It’s devastating to watch Superman fumble around as a regular guy. Rednecks beat him up in a bar. He can only stand by helplessly as bullies and criminals wreak havoc. And as the evil General Zod and his gang begin to take control of the world, he can’t do anything to stop them.

As a youngster, I rewatched “Superman II” a couple of hundred times and spent the entire movie in a state of panic and anxiety even though I knew how everything ended.

Would Superman actually lose?

Spoiler alert: He doesn’t.

In the end, he regains his powers, crushes Zod and saves the planet. Because that’s what Superman does.

But while the crisis is ultimately averted, we’re still left shaken by the movie. We know Superman isn’t completely invincible. Yes, he’s Superman…but…

It’s a feeling even the greatest college football players know. Across a brutal SEC college football schedule, even the league’s superstar supermen will have a game or two in which they stumble, when they need help, when they need someone to help them find the power again.

To win an SEC title, you need a bunch of men who are super, not just a Superman.

South Carolina has a player on its roster who has indeed been super for much of his time in garnet and black. But if this team is to play for a championship, he’ll need his teammates to fly high with him.

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S On His Chest

“We don’t need him to be Superman,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said earlier this week at SEC Media Days in Atlanta.

He was speaking about his quarterback, LaNorris Sellers, a player who many among of us have compared to the Man of Steel on quite a few occasions. While Sellers may not need to be Superman, he has certainly resembled the guy in the red cape more than once.

We watched him engineer that stirring comeback against Missouri last year, then watched him confirm his status as an all-time Gamecock legend by sticking a knife in the heart of Clemson fans everywhere with a weaving, breathtaking run to the end zone with a minute to go in the 2024 Palmetto Bowl, when he froze the entire Tigers defense into a sheet of ice.

It’s entirely possible that Sellers can put this team on his back and go out there and win a couple of ballgames through sheer talent and determination. That’s what superstars do. And that’s why you want one on your roster.

But if the Gamecocks are to win eight, nine or ten games, or storm into the College Football Playoff?

No matter how talented the quarterback is, there’ll be a quarter, or a half, or maybe even an entire game when he’s not at his sharpest. And that might be fine if South Carolina was playing an American Athletic Conference schedule.

But this is the SEC, where, as Beamer said, “Every Saturday, you better be at your best. In this league, anybody can beat anybody on any Saturday.”

Every football program in this conference has a superman or two on its roster.

That’s why the Gamecocks will have to be super in every phase of the game.

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Building a Hall of Heroes

Across more than a century, South Carolina football has produced some truly great individual players.

George Rogers won the Heisman Trophy during his time in Columbia. Jadeveon Clowney became the talk of the entire sport by delivering a monumental sophomore season for Steve Spurrier’s team. And the program has sent a host of world-class receivers to the NFL, most notably Sterling Sharpe and Alshon Jeffery.

Individual superstars can sometimes carry a basketball team to a championship – just ask Michael Jordan and LeBron James. But it’s harder to do in football, and doubly so in the SEC. Indeed, when I think back to those dominant Nick Saban teams from 2007 to 2020 or so, what I mostly think about are collections of really well-coached players and units who performed at the highest level whenever they hit the field.

I rarely think about individual players, though the Tide certainly had many great ones during Saban’s tenure.

As the son of a highly successful football coach, Beamer seems to have grasped this lesson as well as anyone who’s led the South Carolina program. When referring to what kind of expectations he had for his quarterback this season, Beamer instead spoke of Sellers’ teammates.

“We’re gonna be better around him when you just look at our offense, with guys that we return and people that we brought in and the depth we’ve added at a lot of spots, and we need to continue to be great around him,” the coach said.

We know Sellers will come to play every Saturday, and on some of those Saturdays, we can even expect him to be Superman.

But there will be a time when he’s tested. There will be a time when things look grim, when all seems lost, just like it seemed for the Man of Steel in “Superman II.”

And when those times come, South Carolina’s remaining men will need to stand up and be super, too.

Let me know your thoughts about the upcoming season by writing me at [email protected].

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