Scott Davis: Batteries recharged at Electric Avenue
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.
I started calling Williams-Brice Stadium “Electric Avenue” years ago, because I love the 1980s and because it sounded like a good nickname for a great football environment and because I’m a strange person.
You know it is as well as I do: When those people inside that stadium really care and really believe at the same time, there’s an electricity in the air that you can actually feel crackling against your skin. There’s nothing like it anywhere.
There are countless stories from throughout the decades of the Williams-Brice Stadium crowd willing its Gamecocks to victory, too many to recount. Just last season, while attending the Texas A&M game at the old ballpark on George Rogers Boulevard, I remember thinking, “These people are not going to allow us to lose tonight.”
They did not.
When Electric Avenue is humming, it produces a strange and unique vibe that is simultaneously fun, warm and loving (like a long, gigantic hug), and chaotic, radiating intensity and an “absolutely anything might happen here tonight” energy that scares you juuuuuuust a little. When Williams-Brice is firing on all cylinders, it simply swallows you.
And on a night when the South Carolina football team stockpiled yards, points and a much-needed win against overmatched Furman, I kept coming back again and again to the same surprising storyline: The crowd.
“The crowd is really awesome tonight,” I kept muttering to my wife while watching the game from our den in suburban Atlanta. “Really, really awesome.” She kept nodding and silently agreeing. Then a few minutes later, she’d suddenly say something like, “This place is absolutely rocking.”
Friends, my wife is not the type of person who usually says things like, “This place is absolutely rocking.”
But it was and she did.
Then I started getting the texts: “Crowd looks awesome on the big screen tonight!” Something was going on out there. This wasn’t an important SEC game, where enthusiastic crowds are essentially a requirement for membership in this league. This was FCS Furman, the purple Paladins from Greenville. And they were being greeted as though they were the Georgia Bulldogs or the Florida Gators or the Tennessee Volunteers.
Clearly, this fan base needed a win. Saturday night, it made sure that it got one.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be newsworthy that a team desperate for a positive development got a warm welcome in their home opener, in a year in which hopes had soared during the long offseason. But I’ve been a South Carolina fan for many, many years. And in too many of those years, a loss like the one the Gamecocks endured in Charlotte last weekend would have cast a chilly gloom over the Williams-Brice faithful the following week, and maybe for the rest of the season.
We would have sulked – 80,000 people sulking together, fussing and cussing like a squabbling family at Thanksgiving. Saturday night, we came together instead.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. The last week hasn’t exactly been joyous and bubbly inside Gamecock Nation. We were so ready to soar into the 2023 season after a thrilling close to the 2022 campaign, and watching dejected Gamecock fans file out of Bank of America Stadium last Saturday felt like seeing an eagle being shot out of the sky and dropping directly to earth with a thud.
Yes, there was consternation. There was a general gnashing of teeth. There was angst. The email in my inbox these past seven days confirmed it.
But instead of being swallowed by the angst – as many Gamecock crowds did in the 1990s and early 2000s – the people who packed Williams-Brice on Saturday instead swallowed up the Furman Paladins, the SEC Network’s cameras and the game itself.
After a brutal opener that left the team limping and dazed and already needing to recharge the batteries with 11 games remaining, South Carolina’s football team returned to the friendly confines and plugged into Electric Avenue.
Of course, with all of the injuries the Gamecocks have sustained in two weeks of competition, perhaps we can’t say that the batteries are fully juiced and operating with a 100% charge.
But they’ve been restored. There is life in them.
And it happened just in time for the team to leave Electric Avenue again and head Between the Hedges.
I suspect it will be electric there, too.
The “Spencer Rattler is Electric on Electric Avenue” Game Balls of the Week
I typically name our weekly Game Balls after a top performer, but I just couldn’t pick a winner between lethally efficient quarterback Spencer Rattler and the jubilant Williams-Brice crowd. Hence, the “Spencer Rattler is Electric on Electric Avenue” Game Balls. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Let’s hand ‘em out!
Spencer Rattler – Was electric. Rattler did everything but perform the Electric Slide on Saturday night. The quarterback is ready to have the best year of his college career, and if his receiving corps can get healthy and his offensive line can find a way to keep him upright, he’s going to do just that. Rattler was a ludicrous 25-for-27 for 345 yards and three touchdowns against an overwhelmed Furman defense, and he barely saw the field in the second half as the Gamecocks committed to the youth movement.
Electric Avenue – I already gave you the combination for Williams-Brice excellence: The crowd needs to care and believe in equal measure. The caring part is usually not the issue. It’s the belief part that sometimes holds us back. And for good reason – we’ve had our feelings and emotions smashed and obliterated one too many times across the lonely decades. Sometimes we want to believe but can’t. But Gamecock fans have given their whole hearts to Shane Beamer – we’ve put all of our emotional chips at the center of the table. And on Saturday night, that long, gigantic hug from the crowd felt real and rejuvenating.
Eddy Grant – For giving us this song and this video.
The Force is With You – Luuuuuuuuuuuuuke! Great to see longtime Gamecock and fan favorite Luke Doty logging important minutes on Saturday night. The Myrtle Beach jack-of-all-trades caught a long touchdown bomb from Rattler and took over at quarterback for a bit in the second half. It feels like he’s going to do something memorable and important in a crucial game this season, doesn’t it?
Xavier Leggette – This 2023 season is morphing into the Year of Xavier. And the wide receiver is shining in it.
Serving Youth – The second half was a full-blown Youth Movement in Columbia, with freshmen and young players galore getting meaningful playing time in a game that hadn’t even reached Full-Fledged Blowout status quite yet. LaNorris Sellers made his highly anticipated debut at quarterback and calmly and efficiently led a couple of scoring drives, dropping a laser-beam into the arms of Tyshawn Russell for a touchdown that jolted Electric Avenue into hysteria. Then he threw for another score, this time to former five-star recruit Nyck Harbor, which is when my phone started blowing up with “Get ready to see that combination for the next few years!” texts. Always fun to get happy texts on a Saturday night.
Pressure – After a painful week in which the South Carolina defense struggled to get in the face of North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye, the Gamecock D finally found the backfield by the second quarter on Saturday night. They harassed, flustered and chased Furman quarterback Tyler Huff for the rest of the night, and eventually shut down a Paladin offense that had been moving with uncomfortable ease in the first quarter.
South Carolina-Furman Deflated Balls
I’d love to say this was a Deflate-free evening. But that wouldn’t exactly be true, would it?
Kicking a Field Goal Early – I’m not the same fan that I was 20 years ago. At some point over the years, I’ve come to the startling realization that I actually have no idea what decisions a football coaching staff should be making on any given play, and instead of griping and whining about individual play calls, I tend to watch games now as though I’m merely hanging on for dear life. What I’m trying to say is this: You rarely hear me screaming “What we were thinking right there?” anymore. I’m too old for that silliness. Right?
But on South Carolina’s first drive of the game, the Gamecock offense stalled inside Furman territory and faced an early test: fourth-and-3. It seemed – at least to me – like the obvious moment to go out there and seize the game by the throat against an underdog, reestablish order, energize a hungry home crowd and grab three yards (again, against an FCS defense). Instead, the Gamecocks tried a 50-yard field goal as though they were concerned points would be at a premium throughout the night against Furman, and when the kick clanked off the uprights, I may or may not have shouted, “What were we thinking right there?!” While we’re here, let’s go ahead and give one to…
Me, for Forgetting I No Longer Gripe and Whine About Individual Coaching Decisions During Games – Deflate me, please. I’m still getting back into game shape.
This Injury Thing is Starting to Get Worrisome, Isn’t It? – South Carolina limped away from Charlotte as banged up at critical positions as I can remember the team being in recent years. Instead of getting a reprieve from the injury bug for a week, the Gamecocks instead endured more bad news: An already ailing receiver corps now includes Ahmarean Brown, and an already thin secondary must now make do with Keenan Nelson hurting. Meanwhile, all-world receiver Juice Wells doesn’t seem back to full strength, and if you’ve got a nervous disposition, you’re starting to wonder how long it might be before he’s able to operate at 100%.
“Holding, on the offense…” – The South Carolina offensive line looked better in Week 2, and by the second half, they’d begun to finally bear down on a scrappy Paladin defense. But holding penalties kept putting the offense off schedule, helping to keep the 47-21 final score from reaching genuinely eye-popping proportions. While we’re here…
The South Carolina Running Game – Hasn’t been electric yet, and many of us are starting wonder if this is as good as it gets. You would’ve loved to see South Carolina impose its will on Furman, but by the second quarter, my wife was openly chanting “Just throw long bombs. Just throw long bombs” at the TV screen whenever the Gamecock offense jogged on the field. I couldn’t argue.
When it was all over, the Gamecocks and their fans had gotten what they needed after a disappointing first week. They’d had hope restored. They’d had the passion reignited.
And they had the batteries recharged, just in time to make the short drive to Athens.
Once again, Electric Avenue energized us when we needed a lift.
Just in time.
Tell me what you thought about the Furman game by writing me at [email protected].
