I am a proud graduate of the University of South Carolina.  I spent four and a half of the best years of my life there.  For more than ten years I had season football tickets and attended games faithfully.  Only after moving out-of-state and having a family did I trade my season tickets for a big-screen TV and Saturdays watching the Gamecocks from afar.

When people ask me what kind of team I think we’re going to have this season, I reply “I think we have a chance to be pretty good.”

Why do I say we?

1. Because the USC took my money, and in return I received an education.  I have a piece of paper that is proof of this exchange.
2. Because week in and week out, through the good and the overabundance of bad, I watch and cheer and curse and throw furniture for my team.

You see, me and USC, we are “WE”.

So when the Gman, the almost silent but extremely important third member of TRC, brought up the topic this morning, it got us to thinking – what are the rules of “we”?

First of all, for you fans that believe you absolutely have to be a graduate of a school to say “we”, I disagree.  I think intensity of fandom + loyalty + length of fandom can ultimately warrant a “we”.

Let’s review the situation that started the conversation – Gman met a guy from Indiana who claims to have “adopted” Alabama as “his team” and referred to them as “we” throughout the conversation.  Is that we-worthy?  Absolutely not, under any circumstances, including the equation listed above.  You are never allowed to adopt a team outside of your state or a bordering state.  Indiana to Alabama?  Preposterous.

If you received your undergraduate from, oh, let’s say, Furman University, and your graduate degree from USC, you are we-worthy.  You are also we-worthy to Furman because they are in a lower division, but I’m not sure why you would want to be.

If you received your undergraduate from, oh, let’s say Baylor University, and your graduate degree from South Carolina, you are only we-worthy to one, not both.  Pick a side, mister.

If you have been an intense, loyal fan for fifteen years or more, you CAN be we-worthy, but these cases must be reviewed individually for we-worthiness.  (Are you a season ticket holder?  Do you have more than one golf shirt representing the university?  Do you have a sticker on your car?  And the list goes on.)

If you are a loyal fan under the age of 20 but are not attending a school, but have a parent that is a graduate, you are we-worthy.

If you are a loyal fan and are not attending the school, but have an uncle you admire and wish you could be like, you are we-worthy.  (You are welcome, nephews.)

If you have a son or daughter attending the university, you are we-worthy, because more than likely you are making some sort of contribution the university.

If you are my wife and are only a casual fan, but you are a graduate, you are we-worthy.  She is extra we-worthy because watching a game with me is like watching with a rabid chimpanzee that hasn’t been fed in a week and has the ability to hurt your feelings.

If you read obscure blogs about your team because you are so desperate for more, you are we-worthy.  (If you manage or write for an obscure blog about your team, you deserve a round of golf with Steve Spurrier.)

Professional sports – you are never we-worthy, so don’t even think about it.  You can be loyal, faithful, own the paraphernalia, be a season ticket holder, be neighbors with Prince Fielder, it don’t matter.  I have been an Atlanta Braves fan for 35 years and have never once referred to them as “we”.  It just ain’t right.

But with collegiate sports, there are gray areas, for certain.  You must use your discretion to determine if Johnny Nextdoor is we-worthy, and opinions may differ occasionally.

There are also some exceptions for different universities.

Take Clemson Tiger University (CTU) for example.  Rules for CTU fans are, like their subject, slightly different.  You can be CTU we-worthy if:

• You own more than one tractor.
• You own or are married to a goat.
• You are on your fourth marriage, but only your third wife.
• You are constantly trying to convince your friends to listen to Jimmy Buffett’s “new stuff”.
• You have more felony arrests than teeth.
• You believe the 1981 “National Championship” is legitimate.
• Your family tree fails to branch.
• You have a tiger paw painted on the side of your meth lab.
• You had your wedding, reception and honeymoon at the Super 8 in Anderson.

The rules of “we” are a work in progress, but we at TRC are determined to be the we-police and exact justice for all true fans.  Please help us stamp out we-posing everywhere.

So I’m headed home for the day, looking forward to a nice relaxing evening at home.  I pull up to a red light and surreptitiously check my phone (doggone texting ban, you make such sense, but I hate you still) for messages.  I roll across a retweet of the following:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90539559762399234

Wow.  W.O.W.  Did not see that one coming.  Jeffrey has always been, as far as I can tell, a model student-athlete.  In fact, his team leadership was just rewarded when he was named as one of three Gamecock representatives to SEC Media Days.  The HBC doesn’t just hand those plane tickets out like candy, you’ve got to earn it.

But still, the tweet was from Sport Radio personality, ne’ New York Giant, ne’ Gamecock Footballer, Corey Miller.  He would know, right?  And he says he has a source, and a source would know, wouldn’t he/she/it?

A few minutes pass, and Miller’s source has more information:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90544597494804481

How do you blog the sound of a needle scratching off a record?  Would it look like SSSCCCRRREEEAAAACCCCTTTTCCCHHHH? Not sure, but I digress.  Bottom line, I quickly developed a reasonable doubt about the veracity of this story.  First, either Corey or his source were woefully behind the curve on our current football roster, as Nick Allison quit the team over a year ago and ran back home to his Asheville, NC girl-squeeze.  But even more than that, I doubted that our all-american gazelle of a wide-out was hanging out in Fivepoints with a reserve no-name trenchman.

I mean, I WANT our team to be built like that, I would LOVE to think we had that kind of top-to-bottom cohesiveness, but I strongly suspect that Alshon Jeffrey, potential Biletnikoff Award Winner and 2012 NFL First Round Draft pick, might have a slightly more glamorous entourage.

So the story had cracks, but it was still a concern, right?  Then I saw this:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90549221685596160

Apparently the story had developed to the point where a brand new member of our offensive line was hit in the mouth by an unknown assailant who was actually wielding our potential Heisman Candidate as a weapon!  Unbelievable.

Really.  I mean that.  The story was and is unbelievable.

Within a couple of hours, Miller revised and extended his earlier remarks thusly:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90598270170185728

So what do we know?  Not much as it turns out, other than Alshon Jeffrey absolutely did NOT get arrested over the weekend.

Can I have the last two hours of my life back?  More importantly, can Alshon?

Yesterday Baseball America awarded its 2011 Coach of the Year award to University of Florida head man Kevin O’Sullivan. The same Kevin O’Sullivan whose UF team lost 2 out of 3 regular season and 2 out of 2 National Championship Series games to Ray Tanner’s South Carolina Gamecocks.

When a team that is described with words like “scrappy” and “overachievers” whips a team that is described as “loaded”, don’t you attribute a tremendous amount of that to coaching? Call me biased, because I am, but are there any unbiased observers out there besides Baseball America that can honestly say Kevin O’Sullivan did a better job than Ray Tanner in the 2011 season? 

Now look, I’m not real big on preseason or postseason awards. I don’t really care, and I’m certain Tanner and his two rings care even less. But the Twitter exchanges of BA’s Aaron Fitt – a good writer and excellent ambassador for the college game – really got my temperature up. A sampling:
http://twitter.com/#!/aaronfitt/status/89025020608774144
Um, “spread the love”? What happened to giving your “Coach of the Year” award to the actual “Coach of the Year”? So Ray Tanner has won it twice, it’s time for somebody else to win? Why don’t you just go the way of Little League these days and give every coach a COY trophy? YAY, WE’RE ALL WINNERS!
http://twitter.com/#!/aaronfitt/status/89067594543398913
Honor great coaches – check.

Who did great coaching jobs – check.

Have built elite programs – screeeeeeeeeeeeech!!!

Part of the Coach of the Year award is to honor a coach who has built a great program? That’s up to the universities, and it’s called a pay raise and contract extension.

If that’s part of the criteria, then the guy who probably did the best coaching job in the country – Cal’s David Esquer – shouldn’t have even been considered given his program was almost put in the dumpster a few months ago.
http://twitter.com/#!/aaronfitt/status/89068268102483968
If he deserves it, then yes.

Fitt also had a tweet in there where he blasted Gamecock fans who strongly disagreed with him, but in the interest of keeping the peace with the G-Nation he apparently removed it. 

My disclaimer is this – nobody is out to get us.  This is not personal.  There is no great conspiracy against the University of South Carolina, its athletes, coaches or fans. 

In awarding its 2011 Coach of the Year, Baseball America quite simply swung and missed.

We saw it, we watched the highlights, we read every article on the internets about it, we watched it again on DVR, we bought the t-shirt, and the hat…and it will never, ever get old. 

But there is only so much we at TRC can write about Tanner, Wingo, Roth, Walker, et al, so we’ll leave it to Justin King Media to wrap this season (and a little of last season) into a nice, tidy little bow. 

Kudos to Mr. King, outstanding work once again. 

Or as we like to call it – Leggett-Cam.