Y'know, I grew up here in Virginia, where college football is not a really huge deal (especially when I was growing up in the '70s, when UVa and VT both were mostly mediocre). I went to a I-AA school (JMU, the 2004 I-AA national champions) which itself was very mediocre in the mid-80s when I was there.
So I wasn't prepared to move to Columbia, South Carolina in 1997 and be introduced to the religion that was Gamecock football. Especially considering that the Cocks--not to put too fine a point on it--usually aren't real good. I mean, when your program's high point is back-to-back trips to the Outback Bowl?
And yet, there ARE no sports in Columbia other than Gamecock football. The years that the basketball team were tearing up the SEC and going to the NCAAs, the years that Ray Tanner had the baseball team going to the regionals and super-regionals again and again, all you heard on the radio call-in shows were Cock fans wondering who the third-string tight end was going to be on the depth chart for the spring scrimmage, and Clemson fans still talking smack about beating USC six months earlier.
USC fans are, if nothing else, loyal. Real loyal. As in, 65,000 tails in the seats during Lou Holtz's 0-11 first season loyal. (And that wasn't for the Clemson game, which is, of course, always a 81,000+ sellout.) They're like Cubs fans with better accents. Every year is going to be The Year The Cocks Dominate. And by the end of the season, it's always "wait till next year." And come next year, they're back in the parking lot at Williams-Brice, drinking themselves blind in the Cockabooses before the game, convinced that this time, it really will be The Year.
At least The Ol' Ball Coach has the Gamecock team crime rate up to the standards of most of the rest of the SEC...
}:-)4
Great post. USC will rise again. LOL!!