Shots From The Darkside

The Gamecocks thrashed the Tennessee Vols last night. i watched the game online - which was frigging sweet.

ESPN 360 online - gotta love it. Its a feature for AT&T customers that most people don’t know about. Check it out. The only odd thing was that you couldn’t ever hear the sideline reporters. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the game online. We bought a house back in May. To date, I’ve still not had cable or satellite installed. Initially it was because I was being cheap. Then after a few months, i found that I really didn’t miss it. So to watch games this season, I’ve had to go to bars or *GASP* by a ticket and watch it in person. Or I could get sloppy drunk at my Brother’s house. Anyways, I like what ESPN is doing. latency was not an issue.  I didn’t mind the commercials, either.

Back to my Cock - err- Cocks. We beat Tennessee soundly. I must say, though, that I’m tired of these sports pundits making up stories and putting them ourt there as the truth. Steve Spurrier is not leaving USC. We’ve been midly successful - but our boosters have more money than God and are more willing to spend it on the team. If you wanna build a team, SC is the place to do it, right now. We’re hungry to win, we’re not suffering financially like the rest of the country and we’ve been losers a long time. Spurrier sees this. Stop making up stories.

Don’t fire Fulmer. It’s kinda disgusting the way coaches get treated these days. Fulmer is the man. He IS Tennessee football. But a bad season here and there and all of a sudden the fans are calling for someone’s head. Look, firing Fat Fulmer will only hurt your football program. He’s a rock solid guy with experience that everyone knows. I remember all the bitching and moaning about mercenaries like Nick Saban nd Rick Petino. But if Tennessee fires this guy and then hires some head hunter - and then wanders in ineptitude for the next decade, we can trace it back to this game. Hey, no one is calling for Paterno’s job anymore, huh? I guess PSU fans are lucky no one was paying them any fucking attentions

I bet Michigan misses their Old Ball Coach.

It’s the age we live in and I don’t mind it. Lets face the fact that everyone is in this thing to get what they can get - ethics be damned. It’s an issue when a football coach at a university - an institute of higher learning - makes 15x the salary of a tenured and published professor. Lets accept that we’re all shitty people who enjoy these shitty inequities and stop pretending tp give a fuck about guys dancing in the endzone or quitting in the middle of a season. this thing here is a business, and if we learned anything from business, it’s that you gotta look out for yourself.

First our state - err Republicans - forced our state away from state retirement benefits. Then our representatives - err, republicans - pushed us into state Orp invesments rn by their buddies. Then they blew the money on coke and bad home loans. CEOs are still taking $400k vacations and pocketing millions, while Joe 6-Pack misses a game because it’s blacked out. Yup, the NFL worked it out so that if you live within 50 miles of a stadium, you can’t watch a game unless you by a $50 ticket… even though your taxes subsidized the costs of the team.

For the past week, I’ve been listening to my athletic Director beg for money on every public forum available to him. I’m too tired to go into the details, but I’m tired of it. Money doesn’t buy wins, but it does buy some things:

• Quality equipment and good staff to ensure our athletes are getting the best physical educations possible.
• quality facilities that meet minimum safety standards
• Good coaches (Spurrier) who know what they’re doing.

Beyond that, money has very little to do with winning. We can add 15k seats to Billy Brice Stadium, but that won’t make Carlos Thomas a shutdown CB. He has the talent, but not the will. I hear that NFL scouts have been seen at his place for 2 years now. This guy is already planning his end zone dance. Building million dollar condos next to the stadium won’t make Mike Davis hold on to the ball. It won’t stop Darth Visor from calling a toss sweep in his own end zone or from calling 3 consecutive pass plays while his runners are averaging 8 yards a carry.

I heard a caller talk that Tennessee is dropping a quarter billion on its spots facilities. This clown said that big time sports teams have big time facilities. Right now we have the egg preceding the chicken. Schools like Southern Cal and Miami can have billion dollar gyms because they’ve won big time games, - not the other way around.

The time to reward our players is when the offensive line blocks consistently… when we don’t blow leads in big games… when we finish a season as strong as we start it. Until then, you stupid football players will have to deal with preferential housing, specialized tutoring centers and almost-bleeding edge sports facilities.

You stupid Gamecock fans have to realize - the athletic director doesn’t life weights, catch balls or make takes. The ONLY thing he can do is sit around and beautify things. For him, the answer is money. He sees the money big time programs spends and equates that with winning.

To dispell that rumor, one need olnly look at A-Rod or the Houston Texans.

Until then, we’ll be that cat on the basketball court with the hot Jordan’s, the matching Nike Jumpsuit and leather ball who can’t play worth a damn.

but it is, ain’t it? Listening to Gamecock radio, I heard our athletic director - Mr. Hyman - pandering for donations. The Gamecock budget will be a paltry 65 million dollars this season, leaving up 4th in spending. For people with zero athletic ability, spending becomes their only contribution to the project. We’re talking about a director who didn’t send a band or a cheer leader to the first game of the season. He only sent a Mascot the NIT tourneys. He’s raising ticket prices and I don’t know why.

The Gamecocks came 2 or 3 plays from having a perfect season. A few bad play calls, a few dropped balls, a few blown coverages, and our Cocks dropped the last 5 games of the season after shutting down some powerhouses. And Hyman is convinced that building a 200 million dollar weight room will push the cocks over the edge into contention.

It takes money to make money.

That’s one of those sayings that is more often wrong than right. Looking over the landscape of all sports, it should read - It takes money to lose money. See, Hyman isn’t raising prices of tennis tickets or baseball tickets. He’s raising football ticket prices. He’s selling 5 dollar hotdogs and 4 dollar diet cokes. I’m thinking that after all the tax dollars he’s pilfered from the state and the local contributions; he’d have enough money to send a small band and some cheerleaders to support our team in enemy territory.

Maybe the Alumni Band could sit with our fans during Homecoming. Maybe we alumni could have our ceremony during half time life we’ve done for 50 years. In the mean time, he’s selling everything in the hopes that some shitty CB from Southern Florida will come here because we have the best weight room in the SEC East.

I’ll wager that teams like Michigan, Ohio State, Southern Cal and Florida could get recruits if they had no weight room at all. I’d play for Miami for free. But our savior is to be found in a new wellness center that only stupid football players and fat softball players can use. Though, I must say, I loves me some fat softballers. Big girls do suck the best Cock.

Go Cocks

SO, it’s August and fights are already brwaking out across town over the Carolina-Clemson rivalry. People are piss off because Spurrier doesn’t seem to think that beating Clemson - an ACC team - is the end-all/be-all among Gamecock football.

I agree with him: fuck Clemson, SEC championship or bust. Lemme go ahead and set the record straight. We Gamecocks will line across from Top 10 powerhouses all season. There are 5 SEC teams in the top 25 right now, with 4 more receiving votes. Clemson can’t claim that. They can continue to go .500 while beating up on Duke and Wake Forest. If Spurrier and the Gamecocks handle business, the Clemson game will take care of itself. Tammy Bowden is 2-1 head to head against The Old Ball Coach. But the Cocks lost the lead in both of those losses. We choked and gave them rednecks bragging rights.

Here’s the plan:

1. Win the games we’re supposed to win by large margins.
2. Manage our run defense. We lived in the bottom 50 teams against the run. Mst of that is because of McFadden, but I’ll not accept any excuses.
3. Clemson will beat it self. They have no QB and their coach is an asshole
4. If we’re playing Tennessee [insert powerhouse here], and we’re tied going into overtime… and we’re averaging 8 yards a carry, can we PLEASE RUN THE FUCKING BALL AT LEAST 1 TIME IN OVER TIME!!??

I’ve been going to practices and our boys look great. Then again, the defensive line looked amazing in practice last season. Then on 2nd and 10, on our own 10 yard line, we went 2 down and 9 back against a Tim Tebow offence. I may be an old marching band geek, but any asshole with a Playstation knows that you don’t go 2 down 8 back-in-coverage against a running QB. I don’t know if Spurrier is just an asshole, but someone should have been fired over that call.

See ya’ll at the first game. Go COCKS!