Thoughtful Gamecock Invades the Social Network

The Thoughtful Gamecock has expanded his base by making his wit and wisdom available on both Facebook and Twitter.  Please bear with us during this time, as The Thoughtful Gamecock is not OVERLY familiar with the social networking sites that all the kids are using these days.  As our proficiency grows, so will our ability to discuss and anylize all the latest breaking Gamecock news.  Thanks for coming along for the ride, and We’ll see you on the net!

 

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Why, Jarvis Giles, Why?

Carolina fans may remember Jarvis Giles, a slashing four star running back from Tampa that became a Gamecock in 2009.  He was a recruit that we were all happy to steal from Tennessee as their three-year opus of program meltdown began, and figured to develop into a true SEC caliber running back threat.  With the addition of Marcus Lattimore in the following year, Giles’ chances of becoming the #1 guy for the Cocks diminished, and he opted for a transfer to Louisville to play for Charlie Strong.  Carolina fans were left wondering what a Giles/Lattimore backfield would have looked like.

Sad news from Louisville today:  Giles has left the Louisville football program.

Recruitniks may remember that Giles family wanted him to play ball outside of his home state, to be free of Florida distractions, like gang life and other bad influences.  I suppose it can be certain now that his family knew best, as a persistant work ethic problem seems to be the reason for his departure from Louisville.  Idle hands would certainly have been the devil’s workshop in Florida, where football players are treated as often as not like rock stars.

It’s a sad ending for a once-promising football carreer, and one cannot help but hope that this talented young man finds his way around his problems and back to the path of success.

This situation does say something positive about the USC program, I think.  It wasn’t all that long ago that high-end RB talent was being squandered at USC (Derrick Watson, Demetrius Summers)  and that our coaching staff let him go rather than begging him to stay and hoping he would eventually start to “get it” says something about where we are.  Carolina has the talent at running back to be able to prosper without a guy like Giles, and the staff seems willing to tolerate kids who won’t work to improve themselves less than ever before.  This is a positive thing, for chamionships cannot be won by players who just phone it in.

Fare thee well, Jarvis Giles.  I wish you’d have worked harder and stayed longer.  You would have been part of something special.

Sandstorm Reduces Me to a Slavering Heap of Football Fan

Phil Steele Eases/Increases My Pain

We are another step closer to the 2011 college football season with the release of Phil Steele’s 2011 College Football Preview.  Steele’s magazine is an invaluable resource for college football statistics, and followers of The Thoughtful Gamecock can be assured that any stat that we quote here came directly from his crack research team.  There are stats on individuals, teams and conferences.  There are stats from the five seasons previous.  There are stats about stats.  Steele’s magazine is like a media guide for the entirety of college football, and provides the best way to evaluate any team you may care to read about.

This wonderful resource is flawed in only one major way.  Phil Steele is a self-proclaimed Georgia fan and the nation’s  biggest enabler of  The Georgia Myth.  For the second year running, Steele ignores his own meticulously researched statistical information and picks Georgia, a team no other source has chosen to finish higher than third in the east, to go to the SEC championship game.  The mind boggles.  Once again it is proven:  You can take the fan out of Georgia, but you can’t take the derpy derp out of the Georgia fan.

He does have a lot of nice things to say about the Gamecocks, though,  giving high marks to our rushing (ranked #3 in the nation) and our recieving (#9 nationally) units.  Our defensive line (#3 nationally) and linebackers (#12 nationally) are also recognized.  Steele predicts USC to play in the Outback Bowl against Wisconsin.   He gives us a #14 preseason ranking.  As Phil Steele sees it, about the only thing between Carolina and better success than last year is, you guessed it, Georgia.

Steele ranks Georgia’s rushing as #12 in the nation despite losing their top two rushers, saying “I did have this unit ranked at #8 before losing Washaun Ealy.”  He ranks Georgia’s quarterback situation as #14 in the nation, while remaining curiously silent about Stephen Garcia.  Of the 38 top quarterbacked teams he lists, South Carolina is absent.  He picks Georgia as the #10 recieving corps in the nation despite losing AJ Green, saying “This pick is based on potential”.  Sounds like fanspeak to me.

I’ll be writing more posts about Steele’s predictions as I continue to read and absorb his mountain of statistical information.  I do want my baseline understanding of Phil Steele to be made clear:  use the information he provides to better understand college football, but don’t believe a single word that escapes his lips regarding the University of Georgia.

 

Fearless Preseason Picks

This article got me thinking about what I would feel comfortable predicting for next seasons football season.  Here goes:

1.  Gamecocks win the east

2.  Gamecocks earn more than ten wins in the regular season.

3.  Gamecocks lose at Arkansas

4.  Georgia has another thoroughly average season, Mark Richt gets fired.

5.  Tennessee finishes above Georgia in the East.

6.  Clemson has another thoroughly average season , Dabo Swinney is scrutinized, not fired.

7.  Marcus Lattimore is invited to the Heisman ceremony.

8.  Alshon wins the Belitnikoff award

9.  Garcia Becomes USC’s all-time leading passer

10.  Spurrier goes back-to-back SEC coach of the Year.

 

Alshon Jeffery Quickens the Pulse

Another great highlight vid, this time of Alshon Jeffery, to keep you fed during these long offseason months, and to serve as a reminder of what is to come for South Carolina Gamecock Football next season.

 

Clemson’s Waking Nightmare

Clemson football, as it relates to the University of South Carolina, has hit a bit of a slump, and that slump extends far beyond the two straight victories that the Gamecocks are currently enjoying.  For the first time in forty years, the Clemson coaching staff seems to be in a state of permanent flux, while the Gamecocks are as stable as they’ve ever been in that time.  Carolina routinely wins the in-state recruiting battle, and among the very elite in-state talent Clemson finds itself off the radar, most recently with the nation’s top recruit, Jadeveon Clowney, but also with program changing talent like Marcus Lattimore, Alshon Jeffery and Stephon Gilmore.  The fate of the Tigers teams is inexorably intertwined with that of the Gamecocks, as is usually the case with competing in-state schools, but Clemson and its’ fans aren’t used to being on the short end of the stick in the Palmetto State, and the paradigm that allowed Clemson to dominate the state and the series seems to have shifted.  What happened?

Clemson’s fall from grace has a little bit to do with their overheated approach to the rivalry with Carolina, a little bit to do with the overblown expectations of a fan base that still expects its’ program to churn out national championships like a Southern Cal or an Alabama or a Miami, despite having won only one title (and that one was thirty years ago) and a little bit to do with poor program stewardship from people like Terry Don Phillips, who has done more to weaken the Tigers’ state of affairs than Carolina ever could have.

We begin with the rivalry.  Every Carolina fan knows the state of the rivalry.  We know it because no Clemson fan will let us forget.   Clemson enjoys a record of 65-39-4 against the Gamecocks, including the largest margins of victory, longest streak of wins and unbelievable dominance in every decade since the series began.  The ownership of the rivalry with USC is quite an achievement, definitely worthy of note, but has been allowed to become the very identity of the Clemson Tigers, their proudest achievement and their very reason for being.  This approach served them well while Carolina languished in its’ own mediocrity, but as the Gamecocks have improved, Clemson has been left without the series dominance and therefore, has become a team without a beating heart.  Clemson’s locker room is festooned with images from past victories over the Gamecocks.  The rivalry with Carolina is represented in a way that overshadows their 16 bowl wins, 17 conference titles and even their national championship.  Why?  Well, for starters, Clemson hasn’t won a conference title since 1991.  The National Championship was in 1981.  Clemson has won a single bowl game in their last five tries.  One wonders what Clemson would use their locker room to advertise IF NOT their series record over Carolina since every other achievement of note happened before anyone on their team was born.   These days, their last argument for the Clemson program being anything but mediocre is crumbling, having lost the last two rivalry games, and being on track to lose a third.  For the Clemson fan, this is the Fall of Rome, the destruction of Solomon’s temple and the Twilight of the Gods all rolled into one, and it isn’t over yet.  You’ll be seeing more vids like this before the 2011 season is over…

This brings me nicely to my second point:  Clemson has an overinflated view of their football program, and that view leads to hopelessly overblown expectations.  The national title of 81  was bandied about by the fanbase for years, decades even, as representative of the state of tiger football, but as the time continues to slip by, Clemson is bound to that title like Jacob Marley to his chains, and with every clink and rattle they are reminded of an era that is too long gone to brag about too loudly.  The expectations remain though, and every year Clemson trots out another bit of hype to convince the fanbase that 1981 isn’t as far away as they think.  CJ Spiller was touted as an elite running back, one of the nation’s best, and yet was snubbed by Heisman voters, ultimately never being even invited to attend a Heisman ceremony.  Kyle Parker was sold as a once-in-a-generation athlete, hitting blah blah many home runs and throwing for yadda yadda many touchdowns in the same season.  His carreer ended with an ignomonious benching in his final home game, during a drubbing at the hand of the University of South Carolina.  Da’Quan Bowers was supposed to be the first pick in this years NFL draft, but instead he went 51st.  Yawn.  With every failed bit of hype, Clemson fans become more resolved that their team is elite, and more shellshocked when their team is proven to be average.  In the end, this crazy dynamic cost Tommy Bowden his job, and that is the moment that Clemson football was REALLY in trouble.

 

Tommy Bowden did as much as could be reasonably expected with a program of Clemson’s caliber: 72-45 record, eight bowl appearances and domination of Carolina.  When his fanbase started to get restless from this “lack of success”, Clemson Athletics Director Terry Don Phillips gave him a nice fat contract to show his faith in the coach.  He was run out of town the next year, in the middle of the season.  Think about it:  Clemson fans were happy to pay a member of the Bowden family 3.5 million to NOT coach their team, opting instead to get excited about everyboy’s favorite real estate agent and wide recievers coach, Dabo Swinney.  Swinney brought with him a command of the “aw shucks” style of coachspeak, and a deep understanding and mastery of the patented Clemson Hype.  His first recruiting class was univerally considered a failure, but that didn’t stop him from christening them “The Dandy Dozen” and touting them as the future of Clemson football, and the beginning of a return to the glory days of 81.  Then he went 15-12, lost the ACC championship game, lost two of three bowl games and lost two straight to the Gamecocks.  Bowden must have chuckled while counting his millions of Clemson dollars.

 

Swinney’s hype continues:  Taj Boyd has suddenly become a next level QB,  the incoming recruiting class will immediately contribute in ways that will allow Clemson to compete for the ACC title, and Dabo has hired various “small school” assistants that will return Clemson to its days of glory.  Nobody outside of Pickens County believes any of this, of course, but Dabo keeps saying it and the fans keep buying it.

While Clemson fans keep drinking the kool-aid, Carolina fans find their peace of mind  by simply observing what IS.  We need not worry about which freshmen will be able to contribute immediately (but if a Clemson fan drags you into that particular conversation, you can always bring up Jadeveon Clowney) because our major contributing talent is already on the field, and recognized on a national level.  We don’t have to hope that stuntcasting in the offensive coordinator job pays off, we have Steve Spurrier.

One wonders how Clemson’s football season will go.  I predict another 6-6 affair, which will drop the jaws of the Clemson faithful, and result in a plaintive wail of agony.  I predict Swinneys hot seat will glow incandescently.  I predict the hype machine will crank up again, before the season is even complete, and we will hear a lot about the talent of the freshmen and how close Clemson Came to going undefeated.  Just wait til next year.  These boys are winners.  Blah blah blah.

Clemson’s nightmare is set to continue for a few more years, and Carolina fans should thank God that the Clemson fan base refuses to see their situation for what it is.  The longer they remain in denial, the harder their problems will be to solve.

Baseball Tournament Memories

As our Gamecocks sit atop the SEC and the National Rankings, let’s prepare ourselves for the 2011 NCAA tournament by remembering 2010…

Marcus Lattimore Stirs the Soul

I don’t have words that can add anything to this breathtaking Marcus Lattimore highlight vid.  Try to not get excited about the Gamecock future.  I dare you.

Elevation

Sometimes it’s worth looking at where you’ve come from to appreciate where it is you’re going.  For fans of The University of South Carolina, the years may have been fun at times, but certainly not kind.  The modern era of Gamecock football (for purposes of this article, 1969-present) has been characterized by long periods of mediocrity puctuated by all-to-brief moments of excellence and glaring instances of soul-crushing agony.

1969 was a year in which the future of Gamecock football looked bright.  We had the ACC coach of the year in Paul Dietzel.  We had the Conference championship.  We had beaten the hated Clemson Tigers.  To some, the ACC was beginning to look like an anchor holding USC athletics down, rather than a springboard to greatness, and so the decision to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference was made, and the ramifications of that decision would be felt to this very day.

Life after the ACC looked good.  A measure of national prominence was attained by coach Jim Carlen, peaking in the 1980 season, in which beloved running back George Rogers won the Heisman Trophy.  The Gamecocks enjoyed an eight win season that year, the highlights of which were wins over Bo Schembechler’s #3 ranked Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor.  The zenith of Carolina football came in 1984, when coach Joe Morrison led the Gamecocks to a still-best-ever ten win season.

These are moments that the Carolina fan base will remember fondly forever, but remembering these moments requires us to forget much, much more.  from 1969-1984 Carolina won zero bowl games.  In that same time, our record against Clemson was 5-10.   Overall record:  96-83-2.   A winning record, but hardly stellar, and certainly not up to the expectations of fans who had believed the program was headed to national recognition.

The bottom really fell out from 1985-1999.  Playing as an independant was catching up to the Gamecocks, and the coaching hires of Sparky Woods and Brad Scott during this time was doing little to keep us competitive.  The lone bright spot was a win in the Carquest Bowl, the first ever (!) bowl win for the Gamecocks.  Overall record during these years:  72-88-6, including a pitiful  4-10-1 against Clemson.  The dream of national championship caliber Carolina football seemed dead.   Suprisingly, the goundwork for future success had been laid in the waning years of this era, even if the fans weren’t seeing the payoff yet.

The Gamecocks entered the Southeastern Conference in 1992.  Playing in the SEC would turn out to be absolutely critical to the re-emergence of the USC football program, but there was a price to be paid: yearly shellackings at the hands of Florida, Tennessee and Georgia, plus assorted other thumpings from well-established SEC teams like Alabama and Auburn.  A hire was made that seemd to be in step with USC’s commitment to success:  Lou Holtz.  Perhaps the phoenix (er, Gamecock) could rise from the ashes after all.

Holtz led the Gamecocks to the oft-mentioned Outback Bowl wins of 2000-2001, universally recognized by Gamecock fans as the highest peak of Carolina Football since the ’84 season, and the winningest two year stretch of Gamecock football EVER.  These impressive feats lose a bit of luster when one remembers that Holtz finished a USC with an overall losing record (33-37), a losing record against Clemson (1-5) and losing records against SEC East rivals Florida (0-6), Tennessee (0-6) and Georgia (2-3).  It should also be mentioned here that the price for Holtz’ 2000-2001 seasons was staggeringly high.  NCAA rules violations resulted in disciplinary action against the university, and we were subjected to perhaps the ugliest moment in Gamecock history:  The 2004 brawl in Clemson that cost us a bowl game (self-imposed penalty) and any national respect we had accrued.

This was the scenario facing Steve Spurrier when he took the reigns as head coach in 2005.  More than a century of Gamecock football had yielded three bowl wins, one Heisman trophy, one championship season and little else.  Things were getting ready to change.

It’s hard to overstate Spurrier’s impact on Carolina football.  Since his arrival, the Gamecocks have seen sweeping, game-changing improvements in their program, ranging from facilities to basic contractual obligations.  Consider this:  since Spurrier arrived, the parking lot at Williams-Brice Stadium is no longer a dustbowl of shame, athletes study in a multi-million dollar academic enrichment center, our radio contract allows us to reach three times as many listeners as the previous one, we have an apparell contract with Under Armor that actually PAYS US rather than vice-versa and  have been featured on television more than all the previous years combined.  These basic improvements, made thanks to the efforts of Spurrier and Athletics Director Eric Hyman (and with a wink and a nod to our SEC membership) have attracted recruits the likes of which our bedraggled little program has never seen.  Alshon Jefferey.  Sidney Rice.  Stephon Gilmore.  Marcus Lattimore.  Jadeveon Clowney.  These are players around which championship teams are built, and we are getting closer to that promised land.  Prior to Spurrier, our program had a two wins over top five teams, and none over top-ranked teams.  Spurrier matched those two wins by beating a #4 and a #1 in the following year.  We compete with our SEC rivals, no longer a doormat for teams of the east.  We own multiple wins over Florida, Tennessee and Georgia.  We went to the SEC Championship game, gateway to the National Championship for five years running.  More good news:  we arent losing to Clemson anymore, having reached a 3-3 mark against the Tigers with consecutive dominant wins.  We have been bowl-eligible every single year of Spurrier’s tenure.  We have no losing records in that time.

If all of this isn’t enough to get you to admit that the Gamecocks have arrived, then I remind you:  2011 is projected by EVERYONE in the nation to be our Best.  Year.  Yet.

There is truly no part of Gamecock football that has not been made better during Spurrier’s tenure.  You are watching the best teams we’ve ever fielded, who are winning against the toughest competition we’ve ever faced.  You are watching players regarded as the nation’s best by the National Media, that have the best coaches and are playing in the best facilities.  There’s never been another time like this at Carolina, it is a time of joy for the Gamecock fan, it is a time of excellence for the team.  It is our time of elevation.