Scott Davis: Gamecocks are redefining what’s possible

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season that's published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com .

Following is this week's Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it each Friday, sign up here .

When the 2024 football season began, most of us thought we knew what the stakes were for South Carolina.

They weren't particularly high.

We were playing for bowl eligibility. Nothing more.

Six wins, get me somewhere in the postseason, doesn't matter where – the Salute to Veterans Bowl, the Gasparilla Bowl, the StaffDNA Cure Bowl, whatever. Just get me somewhere.

After all, that – somewhere in the postseason – would have represented incremental improvement over the unexpected backward step the program took in Shane Beamer's third season as head coach, when the Gamecocks surprised their followers by slipping to 5-7. Six wins meant that the Beamer Era was at least still chugging forward, that we wouldn't yet be forced to endure chatter about "hot seats" or make those goofy lists of up-and-coming coordinators who are ready to become head coaches.

Six wins would allow us to ease into 2025 and then really take stock of where things were headed. The big decisions and decisive moments were down the road.

That's what we thought, anyway, as August faded into September.

But now that November is here, we're no longer exactly sure just how high the stakes might get right now in the present. In the last few weeks, they've been raised significantly.

What we do know is this: Six wins and a rinky-dink bowl appearance is no longer the plan.

By routing Oklahoma and pounding Texas A&M in consecutive games, the South Carolina Gamecocks have redefined what is possible in the here and now of 2024. This team is no longer playing for the future, no longer playing to show simple progress or to take baby steps in the right direction.

They are playing to win today.

And how South Carolina fares this weekend in Nashville against the suddenly fearsome Vanderbilt Commodores could go a long way towards letting the rest of us know what might be waiting for us as the season closes out.

The StaffDNA Cure Bowl? Nah. The Gamecocks have redefined what's possible.

And now we want more.

Preseason Prognostications Collapse

How do we get to six?

That's the question most Gamecock fans were asking themselves back during the summer as we contemplated what appeared to be the most gruesome schedule the team had faced in years. Before the season started, many of us liked South Carolina to defeat Old Dominion, Akron, Wofford and (let's just admit it) Vanderbilt to get the team to four victories. The question, then: Where would we find two more?

Could South Carolina win on the road against an always pesky Kentucky, particularly with the Wildcats and their fans now genuinely fired up about defeating the Gamecocks? Maybe an upset in one of the favorites in a home game at Williams-Brice? Missouri seemed to have moved beyond South Carolina in football in recent years – was that game even still in play at this point?

It was hard to know exactly where that sixth win was going to come from.

But at 5-3 with four winnable games remaining, everything's changed. Oklahoma and Texas A&M? No, we weren't counting those. Assuming the absolute bottom doesn't fall out against Wofford, South Carolina would now appear to be playing with house money the rest of the way.

Still, the Vanderbilt game (one that both oddsmakers and Gamecock fans would have chalked up as a win back in August) now looms as a crucial test. The Commodores are, shockingly, secure for the postseason. After winning on the road at Auburn last weekend, they've already achieved six wins and are looking for more against a South Carolina team they haven't defeated since 2008.

We've been waiting for about a month now to confirm that this Vandy thing was a fluky, fun little story...and we haven't been able to do it yet. Meanwhile, the always rollicking ride that South Carolina football has delivered during the Beamer years has left many of us wondering if there's another shoe getting ready to drop somewhere.

So why is there so much confidence emanating from this team, its coaches and its fans this week?

Because something feels different this time.

We can't define it and we can't name it. But we feel it.

We absolutely feel it.

Serve Notice in Music City

Winning in Nashville this weekend would do more for South Carolina's program than merely locking up bowl eligibility in 2024.

A victory would serve notice that this is a team to watch in the SEC going forward.

Sure, the Gamecocks could certainly beat Vandy, then still lose to Missouri and Clemson down the stretch – a development that could potentially stifle the program's momentum. But the way the Gamecocks have won in their last two games – with muscle, with strength, by imposing themselves physically upon what were supposed to be athletically superior rosters – has been eye-opening to everyone who closely follows SEC football.

Should South Carolina storm Music City and stop Vanderbilt's run cold by using muscle, strength and brute force, it would just about confirm that Beamer's program is in position to start making a run in the Southeastern Conference, regardless of what happens the rest of the season.

In more than three decades of South Carolina's competition in the SEC, that level of brute force has so often seemed to be the missing ingredient. The teams we were playing simply seemed stronger, faster, more physical.

When we watched the Gamecocks go toe to toe with LSU and Alabama earlier this year, but still fall short, we wondered if that gap really was closing, or if our rivals just delivered a lackluster effort. We aren't wondering anymore, not after seeing South Carolina push around and even toy with Oklahoma and Texas A&M.

This team can step to you. This team will step to you.

And because of it, we don't know where the ride might end this season.

Six wins? Nope. Ten may yet be possible.

This team is redefining the number with every passing game.

Tell me how you're feeling as the Gamecocks head to Nashville by writing me at [email protected]