This letter is in response to the editorial "Gamecocks should stay supportive," which ran Sept. 20, 2015.
Both hot and iced coffee are integral parts of the American college student’s diet, and we at USC are no exception. The thing is though, there isn’t enough pumpkin spice in the world to make lukewarm coffee taste good. The same is true of the Gamecock football team.
We love them when they’re hot, and we should still love them when they’re cold, but it’s the fact that they’re neither that I think frustrates so many people.
Full disclosure: I’m not a Division I SEC caliber football player, and I’ve never coached anything of note, so perhaps I’m just simply wrong about all this. However it seems to me that our problem isn’t a lack of talent, it’s a lack of will. True, we don’t have Jadeveon Clowney any more, and Perry Orth isn’t Connor Shaw. But we probably aren’t going to have another Clowney, and Orth has only ever had one start.
If we had gone into Athens that night and faced Nick Chubb head on, and he had just run us over, I don’t think we as a school would be quite so upset. If Georgia was really just so much better than us that our best just wasn’t enough, I can accept that.
What I can’t accept, though, is our defense thinking that their mere existence is enough. What makes me so disappointed in our team is the blatant mediocrity that is so rampant amongst our players, irrespective of talent.
I’m not angry that we’re losing. I’m upset that our team doesn’t seem to have the will to win. I’m not in favor of participation trophies, but, with a few exceptions this weekend, we didn’t even earn those. And, in case it wasn’t obvious, Elliott Fry is the pumpkin spice in the ill-fated latte that is this year’s Gamecocks.
- Written by Patrick Moore, fourth-year criminal justice student