I’m Thankful for the U of SC....HATE

Sup Y’all, and welcome to hate week.

This is a week near and dear to my heart. Hating is one of the major pillars my life is built upon. No matter what happens, I can always find comfort in hate. Normally I would go through a little spiel about Clemson coming into the game as the worst undefeated, reigning, defending National Champion in the history of sports, and how they need to bounce back from Chase throwing an interception against Wake two weeks ago, but my time is short and my hate is long.

Let’s get straight to it!

I just deleted 600 words on Will Muschamp. Don’t get me wrong, I hate Will Muschamp, but so do South Carolina fans. Earlier this year I went after Willie Taggart and all I got was knowing nods and agreement from the FSU faithful. The truth is that FSU is better than Willie Taggart, but South Carolina isn’t better than Will Muschamp.

In fact, Muschamp and the U of SC are a match made in mediocre football heaven. No one respects Will Muschamp. At best he’s a half rate con man who rode an undeserved reputation as a “defensive mastermind” to a desperate Florida program. The fact that he flamed out with the Gators shouldn’t surprise anyone. The “scream until they get better” strategy is the crutch of a coach in way over his head with nothing to sell but the volume of his voice. That’s Muschamp in a nutshell and Gamecock football distilled to its essence. He’s an under-performing meat-head with nothing to offer than bulging eyes and a cracking voice. The funny thing is that South Carolina fans think that equates to leadership.

That’s understandable. I’m sure Gamecock fans have spent their entire life being screamed at by their superiors.

“Flip those burgers faster!”

“Dig that ditch deeper!”

“Those windshields aren’t going to wash themselves!”

“Hands against the wall! Spread your legs!”

That’s all that bedraggled, degenerate fan base understands, and that’s what they thought they were getting in Will Muschamp. They thought they were getting an unhinged, frothing at the mouth lunatic. The most depressing thing for U of SC fans in this entire Muschamp coaching debacle is that Will can’t even bring himself to yell anymore. Now all our friends from the mid-state get is “Professor Muschamp” in his ridiculous glasses mumbling through a set of rote excuses after yet another loss.

To be fair, it’s understandable. South Carolina is the college football swamp of sadness and Muschamp, like Artax, is sinking in the muck. Unlike the Never Ending Story, however, there is no happy ending, just endless mucky sadness all the way down. Imagine showing up at that cursed stadium in the middle of an industrial hell hole, watching someone in a chicken costume get sprayed with a fire extinguisher, dodging vomit as the folks in the front row regurgitate whatever they thought would help them get through the suffering that is South Carolina football, looking across the sidelines and seeing a disciplined, well coached team like App State waiting for your squad of (somewhat)sentient personal fouls, and still putting your heart into coaching football.

The longer Will spends in Columbia, the more he resembles the slobby, sloppy fan base that half supports his football team. I almost...almost...feel bad for the dude. At one point he was an elite athlete (don’t get it twisted, anyone that plays D1 football is an elite athlete) but now they have to turn down the sideline mics so you can’t hear him breathing during the game. It appears Will has been eating his losses, or eating to get over his losses, or maybe he’s just a huge fan of rib night at the local Golden Corral. Whatever the case, the effort his shirt exerts to hold back his expanding gut far exceeds the effort his football team puts forth on the field. It’s a sad state of affairs in Columbia.

It doesn’t help that Muschamp has to fight against the paint huffing social club known as South Carolina sports media on a daily basis. He’s got Todd Ellis firing off hot takes with the accuracy of...well...Todd Ellis passes. He’s got “The Pastor of Pain” writing Alabama level performance checks with a U of SC talent level bank account and then slinking off to leave someone else to clean up his mess. Atlanta Sports Guy is staked out behind a bush in a 17-year-old Clemson recruit’s front yard and has been for the last two months just in case he comes home wearing a new pair of shoes. The good folks of Gamecock Central put on a professional face while “moderating” a message board full of 50-year-old men fantasizing about throwing urine and batteries at Clemson players. No wonder Will is attempting to sink to the bottom of a pint of Cherry Garcia.

Let’s talk about the living embodiment of dumpster juice that makes up the U of SC fan base. Imagine, just imagine, the mental fragility required to lose your mind over another team’s warm-up. You’d think Clemson was threatening to link arms, walk out of the stadium and turn over their sacred, syphilis dripping rail cars with the number of brain worm riddled takes coming out of that group, led, of course by the aforementioned king of the brain worms, Todd Ellis. I watch a lot of college football, but I can’t tell you one pregame warm-up tradition of another team. Hell, the only reason I pay attention to Clemson’s “Walk of Champions” is because once, every other year, South Carolina’s fan base loses their three collective brain cells over it. When you know you can’t win, I suppose you’ve got to focus your frustration on something trivial, like the other team warming up.

I’m going to cut this short, because if y’all need any more hating on that team from Columbia, I got nothing else for you. Having South Carolina as a rival is a privilege that further cements the idea that Clemson is God’s favorite football team. Their mix of idiocy, failure and delusion is one of most entertaining aspects of the football season. Watching them count down to doomsday while drowning another slice of dehydrated turkey in cold, congealed turkey grease is the thing of Thanksgiving dreams.

Today, I’m thankful for our rivals from the mid-state. May they never change.

Small Request

If you liked this hate article and want to show your appreciation, do me a favor and help this fellow Clemson Tiger save his puppy. I work with an animal rescue, and PARVO is always the worst case scenario for puppies. The good news is that with proper (all-be-it costly) care, the dog has a fighting chance to beat it. Let’s help him blow past his goal, because the 2K he’s asking for is only a portion of what it costs to beat PARVO.