The Big Dance: Gamecocks, Wallflowers

30 Seconds to Make You Feel Better About Mizzou Joining the SEC

Kinda Works:

ACC Football Coaches, Movie Poster Edition

One of our favorite pastimes: matching things with completely unrelated other things:

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[yes, yes I know there’s no London or Beamer. I actually respect those two, and its gettin’ in the way of my snarkiness]

Foto(shop) Friday: The Gamecock Mount Rushmore

Honoring the four coaches who made the most positive impact on the Gamecock football program

Schedule, Schmedule

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious spring by . . . well, speculation on the permanent SEC football schedule, I guess.

With recruiting in the slow spot on the calendar, the baseball season barely underway, and the basketball season ~~screaming toward March Madness~~ over for Carolina AGAIN, Gamecock fans are left with the little things, like making fun of CTU (always in season), and arguing furtively over future conference football schedules.

If you are like me, then you’ve heard a little bit of everything in this discussion: nine conference games, eight, a reversion to seven; permanent opponents, elimination of the perms; pod systems (?!?) and even doing away with the divisions entirely. Some folks at other schools [coughgeorgiacough) are still so high from the 2012 schedule fiasco that they are advocating one schedule for themselves and their cross-division rival, and a completely different system for the rest of the league.

Quick aside here: At what point do the Dawgs just come out and advocate for a round robin for everyone else in the league, but Georgia’s future OOC games against Louisiana Tech, Memphis, and Southern Miss count in the SEC East Standings? Its the only logical extension of their current “preserve our Auburn rivalry” argument, which is just a thinly veiled attempt to dodge LSU, Arkansas, and Alabama for the maximum time possible.

hyman_t600 — USC AD Eric Hyman practicing his stance for upcoming conference negotiations

Oh, and extending this now not-so-quick aside: Play Auburn every year? Tell me again what, exactly, is the attraction in that proposition? I can tell you that, as a school that plays an almost Auburn every year (h/t to the late Lewis Grizzard), the annual meeting with our orange-jort-wearing buddies and their accompanying bovine brides only accomplishes two things: It forces me to wash, ahem, organic fertilizer off my car, and it makes my wife look like Cindy Crawford.

But back to the endless schedule debate: I’d like to make one prediction for the upcoming conference negotiations, and then I’d like to propose a possible alternate solution that has, to my knowledge, not been offered elsewhere.

As for the prediction: I am almost certain that the SEC scheduling negotiations will result in Carolina finding itself at a permanent and marked competitive disadvantage. Why am I so gloomy? ‘Cause our AD has a solid track record of being anything but solid in such meetings. Hyman will be broken by the force of other members, and our football program will suffer for it.

As for the solution, consider this:

Do away with cross-division games entirely. That’s right, eliminate all those games. You want to play someone in the other division? Then schedule them at your own peril. Or, how about this for idea? If you want to play a West team so badly, why don’t you earn your way by beating all the teams in the East and facing the best that the West has to offer in Atlanta?

But I’ve got a feeling that UGa would want to quash that idea pretty quickly.

Two for Tuesday

Witness new UNC head man, Larry Fedora, react to a couple of junior commitments (video from WRAL.com):

Two Things here:
1. Has Fedora gone full-blown Dabo? Is this the new template for the behavior of a head coach? If so, a little bit of me just died.
2. Someone has forgotten everything they are supposed to know about NCAA Division I recruiting restrictions from Section 13.10 et seq (publicly commenting on a recruit, publicizing a prospective student athlete before signing, and participation by media members in recruiting visit, etc). The Tarheels are currently on probation, right?

We Have No Objection, Your Honor.

Have you ever been in a courtroom to watch a guilty plea hearing? It’s a tension-filled environment, and for many reasons. But I can tell you from personal experience (as a PROFESSIONAL – geeze, people!) that much of the tension felt by the participants is that some other participant will go off-script and annoy the judge. The prosecutor is worried about law enforcement, the defense attorney is worried about his client, and both are worried that the victim might sound off at the wrong time. All these concerns are based on hard experience won from similar past events, where someone speaks out of turn and the judge rejects the deal that everyone worked so long and hard to reach.

And so it is after this weekend, which saw the HBC, Dr. Pastides, and the-guy-who-hires-and-fires-the-men’s-basketball-coach all fly out to the golden hills of Los Angeles to appear before the NCAA Committee on Infractions. The Gamecock delegation was summoned to explain to the higher-ups just how several of our football players could have possibly negotiated leases at a local apartment complex, and how an alumnus could dare to go to work for a not-for-profit that helps young basketball hopefuls.

By all accounts Carolina had an impressive package deal worked out, which would see us fall on our swords and admit wrongdoing, pay a fine, cut a couple/three scholarships, and promise to . . . I don’t know here, maybe not let our players sign apartment leases or not let the private companies that own those lease get lax if someone misses a payment, or maybe prohibit our graduates from going on to work with at-risk youth.

Regardless, the collective wisdom out there on the internet strongly recommends that we all hold our tongues (or keyboards, or whatever) and hope that we don’t inadvertently say something that will anger the NCAA. The governing body is just itching to slam us, I guess, and we would all be wise to avoid giving them an excuse. So, I won’t go off-script. I won’t put the deal at risk.

Y’all can all relax.

I won’t suggest that the entire investigation was a stinking pile of dog poo trumped up by a local sports reporter high on hair gel. I promise, I won’t.

And I won’t even point out the bitter irony that we are currently on probation for improperly tutoring (yes, that’s right) prospective student athletes while one of our conference foes suffered no admonition when it recently won a coveted BCS crystal with a player that was widely recognized as having been bought by the highest bidder.

I won’t point out to the NCAA that the fact they know EXACTLY what and whom I was alluding to in the above-paragraph is just another example of how feckless and annoying their whole system of justice is. I won’t even go there.

I will absolutely refrain from rehashing all the evidence that Clemson Tiger University, a football program built on open and blatant paying of players, is still ~~paying players~~ ~~getting wads of cash from rich aunts~~ ~~winning the lottery on NSD~~ just foolin with around with money and a camera today with no apparent negative attention.

I won’t dare point out that the most storied programs out there – the Bama’s and the Miami’s and the Southern Cal’s – all seem to cheat at every turn, and when the stench of their abuses finally grows so distinct that even the NCAA overlords can’t blame it on the dog any longer, the punishments that are handed down don’t seem to put a dent in the strange competitive advantages those schools enjoy.

I won’t call the system a joke, or the penalties asininely inconsistent.

No, I’ll just keep my head down, stay on the script, and hope the judge accepts the deal.

TRC Caption Contest

Actual, non-retouched, screencap from the website of our favorite, loveable, CTU Head Cheerleader.

Please provide your own caption:

Things That Are Kinda Like Other Things

You know what would be a bad idea? A really, really BAD idea?

Trying to foist a football rivalry on two schools that have only played each other a couple/three times and are separated by almost 900 miles, that’s a BAD idea. It seems forced. It seems desperate. It seems amateurish.

It seems to imply that we don’t have rivalries, when in fact we have rivalries galore. Our rivalry with CTU to the side (I mean, at some point don’t they have to actually beat us in a major sport again to qualify this as a rivalry? (Tweet that. (yes I’m now in the third parenthetical thought (deal with it)))) we still have a pretty heated contest each year with the folks up in Athens. And the UT/SC Halloween game is always a spectacle. The HBC has added a dimension to the UF/SC tilt. And then we have the natural rivalry that pops up every year with whatever North Carolina school volunteers for their inevitable spanking.

All of this notwithstanding, SC President Harris Pastides suggested this week that the Missouri/South Carolina football game should have a traveling trophy and be called “The Battle for Columbia.”

The idea is based, apparently, on the fact that our two universities are located in cities with the same name. Nevermind that we call ours “Cola” while they call their’s “CoMo.” Forget that the football history between the two schools includes basically two games – both of which found the Gamecock players completely losing interest at halftime. And forget that the mean temperature of Columbia, MO is a cool 64 degrees while the same measurement is never even taken in Columbia, SC (our thermometers melt every July). Pastides believes we MUST have a football rivalry!

Count me as a solid “Nay” vote on this proposition.

Or wait, lets go the OTHER way – lets make EVERYONE our rival based on random similarities between completely disconnected facts. For Example:

– Battle for the Tailgate: South Carolina’s Fairgrounds and The Grove at Ole Miss

– Battle for the Bag of Fried Chicken: We have a Bojangles right next to the Stadium and CTU has a Chick-fila on its campus – wait, it doesn’t?

– Battle for the Towns that Sherman Burned Down: Savannah doesn’t have D1 football, so I’ll go with SC/GTech

– Battle for the Holtz: SC/Arkansas (although Lou still loves us and hate the stinking hog crap outa them for some reason)

– Battle for the Blowfish: We had Hootie, Kansas had Mangino

– Battle for the Base: We can see Fort Jackson, The Cuban National Soccer Team can see Gitmo.

See how ridiculous it is to partner random similarities and try to extract some meaning?

Dr. Pastides, let me offer the following illustration to assist you in discussing our rivalries. Starting with the top left and traveling clockwise around the photo below, our rivals must 1) have fans in line there today, 2) be located east of this thing, 3) been sponsored at some point by this, and 4) always consider mustard as a condiment here.