Sunday night while reading one of the Gamecock message boards and I noticed a couple of posts that basically said “the pollsters will find a way to screw us out of a number one national ranking”.  A couple of thoughts on that…

First, I’m not sure any rational person would’ve given us more than a 50-50 shot of taking over the #1 spot, so I really don’t see how we got “screwed”. Virginia is having an outstanding season, and went 5-0 last week.  And even though we took a series from the previous #1 team, we still have seven losses, and went 2-2 for the week with a pretty awful loss to The Citadel.

Second, and more importantly, who the heck cares? Sure, being #1 is nice, and it’s better to be #1 than #2 (insert bathroom joke here), but what does that really get you on April 18 other than a puffed out chest? Without using a readily available search engine, tell me who was #1 on April 18 last year. OK, now tell me who was #1 on June 30 last year.

And how many times in 2010 was USC ranked #1 prior to June 30? Get my point?

Let’s secure a national seed and go from there, shall we?

Some other baseball and non-baseball related notes:

• I said this earlier in the year, but this baseball team is unlike any Gamecock team I can remember in any sport. Maybe it’s the fact they’ve carried over the swagger from their National Championship run last year, but I just don’t expect them to lose a big game or a close game. I certainly can’t say that about any of our other prominent programs.
• Jackie Bradley, Jr. is injured. That’s the only reason I can think that he is batting below .280. I don’t know if it’s his back or what, but if he was 100%, he’d be batting fifty points higher. Get well soon JBJr.
• Micheal Roth is one of the great stories in the history of South Carolina athletics. To go from a situational lefty out of the bullpen to College World Series hero last year, and then to dominant starter in the SEC this year, is stuff of legend.  Now, if Coach Tanner will stop trying to ruin his legacy by pinch-hitting him in critical situations…
• But mad kudos to Tanner and his decision to DH Stephen Neff on Sunday. I don’t know if it was a hunch or simply out of desperation, but it sure makes Tanner look like a baseball genius (which he is).
• Watched the end of the first South Carolina-Auburn game last night on ESPNU. I must say, all people have talked about were Connor Shaw’s two interceptions on two drives in that game, but for the most part I thought he really looked poised and in control for a true freshman.  As a comparison,go back and look at the pants-wetting of A.J. McCarron for ‘Bama at the end of their game against Auburn.
• Maybe I’m sensitive to this because I live in metro Atlanta, but for a team that went 6-7, lost 10-6 in their bowl game to Central Florida, and lost their best offensive player and best defensive player, the University of Georgia football team is getting a lot of love this spring.  I just don’t get it…
• I’ll send you out with a cheap promo for a friend.  Tad Wilson is a fellow South Carolinian and rising Broadway and country music star. Check out the duo 10th and Carlisle on iTunes and support one of our home boys.

I wasn’t going to comment on the latest Stephen Garcia suspension, I really wasn’t.  I’m tired.  Super tired.  And I get more tired by the day hearing what everyone else thinks – that Garcia doesn’t deserve another chance, that he’s embarrassing the University, that he has no respect for anyone or anything, that Spurrier has lost his edge by not dumping this guy.  

Then there’s this uber-dramatic blog post from Sporting News, replete with a photo outtake of Garcia mid-blink and Spurrier mid-scowl – BECAUSE GARCIA LOOKS DRUNK AND SPURRIER LOOKS PISSED AND THAT’S THE WAY WE WANT TO REMEMBER BOTH OF THEM DAMMIT! 

Ugh, chill out people.   

So leave it to Spencer Hall from EDSBS to save the day and prevent me from having to form my own opinion.  He says:

“We would remind Carolina fans that Garcia is at worst the second or third best quarterback in the history of your program, took a flyer on your program at a time when other teams were very interested in having him start for them, and has done very little in the way of anything actually nasty or felonious. Dude likes beer, sweet, life-giving beer. At this point it’s Stabler-esque in the charming way, not in the multiple DUI manner.

We would also remind you that every quarterback who ever played under Steve Spurrier has been on the verge of benching at every second of their tenure, so this does not represent a real diversion from the overall historical path of Spurrier quarterback management. If you look at it from a wagering perspective, Garcia will probably still end up being the starter at one point if he’s not thrown off the team. He will likely not be thrown off the team because he’s less malicious and more like the family Labrador who likes to drink beer out of his dog dish, and has one more year to show something like the kind of talent a typical Spurrier quarterback can deliver for NFL scouts: I am just good enough to earn my pension and then immediately retire after spending five years on the bench.”

Bingo.  I’m on board with that. 

Now I’m going to take a nap.  Wake me if I’m not up by September 3. 

Until then, enjoy one of the first photos from the infamous night-before-the-Chick-fil-a-Bowl-hotel-room party.

For those of you filling your kids’ heads with the “you can do anything you put your mind to” speech – if your kid is 5’10”, he cannot do this.