Gamecocks Need to Weather the Storm

South Carolina fans need to stop complaining for a minute and remember one very important fact: You play in the SEC!

The Gamecocks are off to a disappointing start in conference play at 0-2 and sit at 2-2 overall. Nobody associated with this program should be satisfied with losing. The coaches aren’t. The players aren’t. And the fans certainly shouldn’t be.

But let’s put things into perspective. Most people probably figured South Carolina would be around 3-1 overall and 1-1 in the SEC at this point. Instead, the Gamecocks are one game behind that pace.

Is that really enough reason to blow up the entire football program? Absolutely not. Sometimes I wonder if there aren’t Gamecock fans who can’t wait for football season to begin just so they’ll have an opportunity to criticize the coaches. One bad loss comes along, and suddenly the calls begin:

Fire the coach!

South Carolina has already made a coaching change in baseball, and now you hear fans taking aim at the men’s basketball and football programs. You simply cannot build successful athletic programs if your answer to every disappointing season is to hire another coach every three, four, or five years.

At some point, you have to give coaches an opportunity to build something. And South Carolina fans need to understand exactly where their football program lives.

This is the SEC.

There aren’t many easy Saturdays.Teams near the bottom of the SEC standings could walk into other conferences and compete for championships. The talent level, coaching, facilities, recruiting, and financial commitment in this league are on another level.

Look around the conference standings. South Carolina isn’t the only program dealing with disappointment. Programs such as Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt have also had difficult starts in conference play, while teams such as LSU and Missouri have already experienced conference losses.

Should everybody fire their coach? Of course not. Expectations are part of college football, especially in the SEC. But expectations also have to be accompanied by some perspective.

South Carolina doesn’t play in a conference where you can expect to roll out of bed and win 10 games every season. Just look at Clemson. South Carolina’s in-state rival plays a different conference schedule and faces a different path through the season.

That isn’t an excuse. It’s reality. And now the SEC’s nine-game conference schedule makes an already brutal road even more difficult. Week after week, there is another talented football team standing across the field from you.

There are going to be Saturdays when South Carolina looks great. There are going to be Saturdays when the Gamecocks get embarrassed. That’s life in the SEC.

What concerns me is this idea that every time South Carolina hits some turbulence, the answer is to blow everything up and start over. I’ve spent enough years around football to know what happens when you constantly hit the reset button.

You hire another coach. He brings in another staff.Systems change. Players leave. Recruiting relationships have to be rebuilt. The roster changes.Everybody talks about patience and rebuilding. Then, three or four years later, if everything hasn’t gone exactly as expected, some of the same people start yelling! Fire the coach! And the entire process starts again. Where does it end?

Blowing up South Carolina’s football program and starting over isn’t some magic solution. It could set the program back and leave everyone asking the same questions again a few years from now. The Gamecocks are 2-2. There is still football to be played. There are still opportunities ahead.

Instead of spending the rest of the season looking for somebody to blame, how about supporting the young men wearing garnet and black and the coaches who are working every day to make this program better?

Nobody is saying fans shouldn’t expect improvement. Nobody is saying coaches shouldn’t be held accountable. And nobody should ever become comfortable with losing.

But there is a difference between demanding improvement and demanding a complete rebuild every time adversity arrives.

South Carolina plays in what is arguably the deepest and most demanding conference in college football. As long as you’re playing in the SEC, there are going to be storms. Some will be worse than others.

There will be embarrassing Saturdays when you wonder what in the world just happened. But there will also be those special Saturdays when Williams-Brice Stadium is rocking, Sandstorm is blasting, the towels are waving and the Gamecocks knock off somebody nobody thought they could beat.

Those days are part of SEC football, too. So don’t abandon ship every time the water gets rough. Don’t tear everything apart every time you lose a couple of games. Support your players. Support your coaches. Demand improvement, but understand the challenge.

Most importantly Weather the storm. Because if you’re going to play football in the SEC, you’d better learn how to survive a few storms along the way.