Scott Davis: Our Mission: Avoid the Vortex of Negativity

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 (sign up here) and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

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In the anxious hours following South Carolina’s gut-wrenching 29-20 loss on the road to SEC rival Missouri, a central theme seemed to be emerging from inside a dejected fan base.

The loss stung, yes. All losses sting. And this one came after the Gamecocks took a lead into the fourth quarter during a critical SEC game.

But when it was all said and done, it wasn’t as much the losing itself as the way that South Carolina lost.

That’s what frustrated us, made us lie in bed staring at a dark ceiling on Saturday night, made us spend a grumpy Sunday morning thinking again and again about what went wrong. The game had been a long three-hour parade of mind-melting penalties, missed opportunities, missed blocks, sacks on offense that looked avoidable, and whiffed tackles on defense.

There was no other way to say it: This looked like sloppy football.

This looked like something was wrong at a foundational, fundamental level.

South Carolina football has always been a fairly free-wheeling, pedal-to-the-metal operation under head coach Shane Beamer. In many ways, that’s what has made the program interesting these last five years. The highs are extremely high, the lows pretty darn low, and the roller coaster roars on. Let’s face it, roller coasters are exciting.

Say what you will about the experience of living on the roller coaster, it makes people pay attention. And not just South Carolina fans – for the first time in my lifetime, other than a few flickering moments during the Steve Spurrier Era, the national media has seemed intrigued and occasionally even obsessed by Gamecock football. For several seasons running, you have truly never known what to expect from this team.

The upside to having a passionate and emotional coach like Beamer is that it genuinely bonds the fans and players to their leader when things go well. Indeed, Beamer has built up more goodwill amongst the fans than I could imagine anyone else doing with the same overall record and achievements to date. At the end of the day, Gamecock fans really want this particular coach to succeed here. We want this to be the guy.

But if there’s been a downside to the general mood and tenor – the emotional thrust – of the program these last few years, it’s come from what we saw too often on Saturday night: All that passion and emotion sometimes takes us into a miles-long, 15-car interstate pileup of self-inflicted mistakes and unforced errors.

If you’re hoping to watch a buttoned-up, Saban-esque, blocking-and-tackling, fundamentals-of-football-focused outfit, South Carolina has not been the program for you over the last few seasons.

Sometimes the Gamecocks are outclassed by teams with better and deeper talent. But far too often, the team seems to beat itself.

On Saturday, South Carolina accumulated an astonishing 14 penalties. These weren’t penalties that could’ve gone either way, that were judgment calls made by hapless officials who seemed intent on denying the Gamecocks a victory (the way many of us felt after the LSU game last year). No, these were spectacularly avoidable mistakes: False start after false start, kickoffs that landed out of bounds, unsportsmanlike conduct flags on helmet-to-helmet collisions.

We watched the Gamecocks take sacks that seemed to unfold over a period of minutes and looked to most of us like they didn’t have to happen. We watched what seemed like 10 South Carolina defenders crowd around a Missouri running back, with none of the men in white jerseys wrapping him up and bringing him to the ground.

The Gamecocks didn’t just shoot themselves in the feet, but in the face.

And those were the things, more than the final score, that seemed to make the pulse of Gamecock Nation run high in the early hours after the Missouri loss.

It’s in moments like these, after disappointments like this, that a fan base is most in danger of falling into what I’ve always called the Vortex of Negativity. If you’ve been a Gamecock fan for longer than a season or two, then you’ve been inside the Vortex of Negativity before.

The Vortex of Negativity can sink entire seasons, engulf a program, and overwhelm a fan base.

You know what the Vortex feels like, right? Fans sniping at other fans, message boards erupting into nuclear mushroom clouds, talk radio devolving into screaming matches, public pronouncements along the lines of “After 25 years as a season ticket holder, I will not attend any more games this year,” whisper campaigns regarding the firings of this or that coach or administrator. It’s an ugly place, and yet most of us inevitably find ourselves there on occasion when the going gets tough.

I personally have dived headlong, face-first into the Vortex so many times across the last four decades of following this program that I’ve purchased real estate and paid property taxes there. I know first-hand how it feels to be inside it.

There are two things I want you to know about the Vortex of Negativity.

The first is that no matter what any disillusioned former South Carolina coach or administrator, national media member, or fan of another school has told you over the years, the Vortex of Negativity is not unique to Gamecock fans.

Not even close.

Fans of every program in every sport across these United States spend some time in the Vortex.

Indeed, the Vortex has already closed around our friends up in Clemson just four games into the 2025 season, and unless the Tigers win out this year, it will hover around that program until at least next season. The Vortex seems to perpetually threaten to submerge Auburn fans, and it’s doing so again after just a single loss this year to Oklahoma.

Georgia fans, Tennessee fans, Florida fans, and even Alabama fans have spent years – even decades – wandering at the bottom of the Vortex. This isn’t a South Carolina thing. It’s a sports fan thing, and especially a college football thing.

Which brings me to my second point about the Vortex of Negativity.

We don’t actually have to give it any power.

We can contain how large it grows. We can turn down the noise, at least for now.

As fans, there is almost nothing we can control except how we respond to what we see on the field. And it’s tough to care deeply about something over which you have no control. That’s why I’m not asking you to celebrate false start penalties, enjoy missed tackles, or gleefully accept it when the Gamecocks fail to do the little things that could be the difference between winning and losing.

What I am asking you to do is let this season unfold across 12 games.

If there’s anything Shane Beamer and his staff have earned through four-plus seasons here, it’s that. Let it unfold. See where things stand at the end of November. And then decide if the Vortex is where you want to live or not.

That’s what we can control right now.

We can control how loud Williams-Brice Stadium is this Saturday night when Kentucky comes to town.

And if you think the Vortex is growing in strength right now, you don’t want to see what it’s like if South Carolina loses that one.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Avoid the Vortex.

The Vandrevius Jacobs Game Balls of the Week

DISCUSSION: See what other Gamecock fans are saying about the Missouri game

The redshirt sophomore receiver from Florida had himself a night on Saturday, doing what he could to keep the Gamecocks afloat in the other Columbia. Let’s toss some Balls to…

Vandrevius Jacobs – Emerging as a surprising deep threat for a struggling Gamecock offense, Jacobs compiled seven catches for 128 yards and a touchdown, looking for at least one night like the No. 1 receiver South Carolina has been seeking since Xavier Legette headed to the NFL. Speaking of which…

Signs of Life in the Passing Game – You notice I didn’t label this “Signs of Life on Offense,” right? Along with Jacobs, freshmen receiver Brian Rowe and an assortment of others caught enough balls to help quarterback LaNorris Sellers throw for more than 300 yards with two touchdowns.  

Gerald Kilgore’s Interception – At a time when the Gamecock offense had given the ball back to Missouri and it looked like the Tigers might just march in for a touchdown that would have given them an early nine-point lead, South Carolina defensive back Gerald Kilgore made a leaping interception of a pass from Missouri quarterback Beau Pribula that genuinely changed the momentum and gave the Gamecocks new life.

The “If I See Us Commit One More False Start, I’m Going Outside and Walking Into Traffic” Deflated Balls of the Week

DISCUSSION: See what other Gamecock fans are saying about the Missouri game

Penalties, Penalties and More Penalties – As I watched Auburn stockpile an astounding 13 penalties against Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon, I thought to myself, “I won’t see a team commit that many penalties again this season.” It turns out I only needed to wait a couple of hours. South Carolina actually outperformed that total against Missouri, compiling 14 penalties on a night when the Gamecocks seemed intent on helping Mizzou beat them. The coaching staff has repeatedly cautioned fans not to blame all of the team’s offensive woes on the O-line, but it’s hard to make a case for that unit after six false start penalties in one game. Speaking of the O-line…

South Carolina’s Rushing Attack Officially Not Existing – There was no running game for South Carolina on Saturday. Literally. The Gamecocks rushed for -9 yards against Missouri. Sure, some of that total came from the sacks on quarterback LaNorris Sellers. But negative yards in the running game? Negative yards? Meanwhile…

Missouri Running Wild for 285 Rushing Yards – Have you ever seen as many missed tackles in one night as you witnessed from South Carolina’s defenders on Saturday? Mizzou’s Ahmad Hardy is a good back: He leads the FBS in yards after contact. But it didn’t really matter which Missouri Tiger held the football in this game. They bounced off Gamecock defenders with the ease of an 18-wheeler rolling over a twig. If there’s a cure for this allergy wrapping up, the Gamecock D needs to find it, and fast.

First-and-Goal at the Two-Yard Line – Yikes.

The Transfer Portal – I expected Missouri to take a step backwards in 2025 after losing talented players like Brady Cook and Luther Burden in the offseason. So did most of the preseason prognosticators, who left the Tigers out of the Top 25 before the season. And yet they’re now 4-0 and looking just as potent as they’ve been for several seasons under coach Eli Drinkwitz. Did you happen to notice that most of Mizzou’s impact players on Saturday night – from running back Hardy to quarterback Pribula to linebacker Josiah Trotter – seemed to be Transfer Portal guys? Meanwhile, South Carolina is still waiting for meaningful contributions from several of the players it welcomed during the offseason. The portal has truly turned the sport upside down. You can get better quickly through it, and if you fail to use it to land impact players, you can fall behind just as fast.

If there’s anything we can take solace in at this moment, it’s that we’ve been here before.

Under Shane Beamer, we’ve been here several times, in fact – right at the crossroads, where it felt like a season might be in danger of sinking.

Fans like us aren’t in the arena. There is little we can do to stop a season from sinking.

But we don’t have to help it along, either.

The Vortex of Negativity will call out to you over these next few days. You’ll hear it. It will tell you a story that you will believe. It will be hard not to listen.

Our mission – our only mission – is to let it whisper into our ears and still walk away from it.

Tell me how you’re feeling after a disappointing loss by writing me at [email protected].

DISCUSSION: See what other Gamecock fans are saying about the Missouri game