What to expect if you're expecting

posted by David Cloninger, 7/14/2009 01:03:00 PM

“But what would you expect?”
----------------------- FAITH OR FEAR

There’s been a lot of talk, writing, discussion, etc. lately about what we all can “expect” from South Carolina’s football team in 2009.

That is the most dangerous word in town.

Too often, people expect too much. That’s just in their daily lives. They expect things to happen to them instead of going out and making them happen.

When Gamecock athletics comes into the picture, expectations sometimes cross the threshold into absurdity.

If covering sports for a lifetime has taught me anything, it’s to think with your head and not your heart. Of course you want your favorite team to win the World Series, Super Bowl, national championship, but wanting it to and it being able to are as far apart as Michael Strahan’s front teeth.

So, because I would never be so arrogant as to say I know what will happen to the Gamecocks this season – I’ll pause while all of you expel “HAH!” from your souls – I must get my expectations for the team out of the way.

I expect a bowl game.

I know – way to go out on a limb. With 34 bowl games and 120 BCS teams, it doesn’t take a whole lot to go to a bowl. Odds are you can walk out on the curb right now, pick the first 22 people that walk by, hand them a helmet and probably get to a bowl.

But it’s all part of the two-word advice I’ve told every USC fan I’ve ever met – “Don’t hope.”

Don’t hope, and you won’t be disappointed. Don’t aim too big, and you won’t crash too hard.

You leave yourself an out. The Gamecocks take off and win 10 games, you’re along for the ride and it means that much more. The flipside – you expect 10, they win eight, and it’s, “Well, that’s good, but …”

I’m not one of those that likes to predict every game’s scores – what good does it do to muse over how Eric Norwood will match up against Florida’s front five when no one knows if he, the front five or the world in general will be around in November? I like to group each schedule into three sections – “Should Win,” “Should Lose,” and “Flex.”

Usually with USC, I count two or three flex games that are the difference between a bowl or not. This year, I count seven.

The Gamecocks should beat Florida Atlantic, S.C. State and Kentucky. They should not beat Florida or Alabama.

The rest are all in that other pile, which makes me think that a bowl trip is reasonable. Three wins out of those seven, combined with the three should-wins, equals six and that’s a bowl game.

See how that works? I don’t name a prestigious bowl and I don’t look like a tool when USC is invited to the Papajohns.com Bowl. I don’t name a pre-Christmas bowl and I don’t look foolish when the Gamecocks make the Sugar Bowl.

Just a bowl. Which means a bowl trip, bowl gifts, bowl money and a collectable bowl patch on the jersey.

Don’t expect greatness, you won’t be deflated with less than greatness. This team is good enough to go to a bowl – which one is up to it. I think that plateau is fully reachable and reasonable.

Not that anybody will care, anyway, when Moe Brown wins the Heisman.

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