2023 is USC's first Spider-Man Meme year since 1983

Plus, what the infrequency of this phenomenon says about the futility of the "real Carolina" debate.

As you are surely by now aware, in 2023 the South Carolina Gamecocks will play a team that calls itself Carolina and another team that calls itself the Gamecocks. It’s the first time since 1983 that USC (the South Carolina one) has faced two or more teams calling themselves by one of the exact same words or abbreviations.

For this reason, I am calling 2023 the Gamecocks’ second Spider-Man Meme Year. The recurrence of this year holds no predictive power. So do not look to 1983 for clues as to how 2023 might unfold. It is merely a passing curiosity to be observed and recorded, like the comings and goings of Halley’s comet, for the enlightenment of future generations.

In 1983, Carolina (the nethermost) opened the season with a 24-8 loss to UNC and defeated Southern Cal 38-14 in the second leg of a home-and-home with the Trojans. Owing to South Carolina’s departure from the ACC, Gamecocks vs. Tar Heels hadn’t been a perennial affair since 1970. Had it been otherwise, 1980 — the year of the away leg against the Trojans — would have very likely been the first Spider-Man year.

South Carolina hasn’t played Southern Cal since 1983 and took a 15-year hiatus (1992-2007) from Chapel Hill. With those two schools out of the picture for so long, the chances of another Spider-Man year were slim. Which is not to say that there weren’t some close calls.

From 1986 to 1989, South Carolina played at least two directional Carolinas every season. And in 1988, the Gamecocks started the season with a Full Compass:

There was also 2007, when USC played UNC and South Carolina State. But the SC State style guide makes no claims to being recognized as “South Carolina” or “Carolina,” so I didn’t count it.

Why have I devoted 300 words to this?

Partly because I find it amusing as an end in itself. But also as a means of returning to one of my hobbyhorses: the sheer futility of debates about who is the “real Carolina,” which, win or lose, we are sure to be inundated with in the coming days.

“Who is the real Carolina?” is not an actual, answerable question. It is empty-calorie engagement-bait to drive reach on Twitter. And to care about the answer to this fake question is to pretend that human beings are not capable of understanding context.

There are two schools that call themselves Carolina. Two.

Meanwhile, there are millions of people that call themselves Connor. There are billions of people who are called “Dad.” And yet somehow I manage to get through the day without being confused by which Connor or Dad is being addressed (nor have I made it my life’s purpose to subjugate all other Connors and Dads), even when they’re in the same room as me — which happens much more often than Carolina is on the same field as Carolina or USC is on the same field as USC.

Let’s say we become the dogs that catch the car. Kirk Herbstreit walks on to the set of College GameDay and declares that the real Carolina is in Columbia, SC and the entire panel nods in solemn agreement. Then what happens?

There would be many contexts in which you could say “Carolina” and people would know what exactly what you meant. And there would still be times — like, I dunno, when you’re visiting New Mexico for some reason — when you’d have to say “South Carolina” to make yourself clear.

It could be worse. There are dozens of Bulldogs and Tigers out there. I sincerely hope they’re not spending their time arguing about which one is the real one. So let’s just be thankful for our extremely unique mascot and the fact that whether you call us South Carolina, Carolina, or USC, absolutely no one will ever call us U of SC.

What’s a good Gamecocks podcast to listen to?

In the TTFA chat,

Kyle Petersen

asks a good question: what’s the best/your favorite Gamecocks podcast? I am ill-equipped to offer a good answer, as all the ones I used to listen to are no longer publishing new episodes, and I have found myself overwhelmed by the surfeit of new podcasts launching every day hour minute.

If you’ve got a suggestion, drop it in the chat.

Year 3 of starting the games an hour late

In Jan. 2022, I explained how, in an effort to avoid the flood of useless South Carolina football content, I implemented several practices that vastly improved my enjoyment of the sport. One of those was starting the game at least an hour late, allowing me to fast-forward through commercials and giving me a strong incentive to stay off my phone entirely.

The farce that was the 2020 college football season allowed me to fully address something that had been creeping up on me for a while: I had lost much of the joy I once felt about college football. When the 2021 season rolled around, I had an idea that I thought might help fix this: what if I just watched the games? No podcasts, no written content, no message boards, no social media — just the games. The only thing I read were The Rubber Chickens’ Snap Judgments column (somehow, after all these years, Buck remains the only must-read South Carolina sports opinionist), the occasional Gamecock Central newsletter, and one SEO-fodder article that answered my question about what Zeb Noland’s full name was.

I recorded every game and watched most of them after my three-year-old had gone to bed. This also helped me stay off Twitter during the game — the two-screen experience is another thing that was supposedly going to deepen our sports-watching experience but has only made it shallower. I’m certain there are legions of fans who were much better-informed of the week-to-week fluctuations in the depth chart, but it was easy enough to keep up with most things just from the information disseminated during the broadcast. In fact, my enjoyment of the broadcast was actually enhanced, as many of the biographical details portioned out between plays were, for the first time since 2002 or so, things I had not already read, months ago, on a message board.

I’m happy to say that this approach worked very well for me again in 2022, and I plan to use it again in 2023. I acknowledge that some of these measures are a bit extreme, and even I’ve not kept to every one of them. But I encourage you to take any aspects of it that work for you and give it a try as well. Let me know how it goes!

Some CFB links

Jason Kirk’s always-essential Watch Grid also includes this week some good words on how the present moment of college sports upheaval is nothing particularly new.

The 2020s isn’t the first decade in which media companies get to treat competitions and traditions like assets. This decade is the product of the 1980s (when colleges sued TV rights away from the NCAA’s monopoly), which was the product of the ‘50s (when the organization founded on limiting violence doubled down on its taste for money, first acquired via its basketball-tournament business).

After that 1984 Supreme Court decision, one of the first literally made-for-TV college events was the 1987 Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, when the formerly second-rate postseason game managed to win a bidding war for No. 1 Miami and No. 2 Penn State, paying more than double its usual $1.1 million payout. That meant NBC could bill the game as an extremely rare Actual National Championship.

But because of TV-enhanced bowl contracts that greased the right palms, the following decade would include undefeated teams like 1994 Penn State missing out on title shots, plus three other disputed championships (each the end of the world), leading to the even more palm-greasing BCS (also the end of the world).

Though fans, players, and coaches had wanted official title games for over a century by that point, the lesson was the same as always: College football does not change until someone gets paid, at which point it changes dizzyingly instantly.

In Extra Points, attorney Len Simon wrote a pair of articles about how a whole bunch of state-level NIL laws might be unconstitutional. Also in Extra Points, Matt Brown had a good post laying out in clear terms what sets of values are on the line as we fight for the future of college football.

Matt Scalici of AL.com has conducted a very important scientific inquiry into the frequency of Nick Saban’s smiles during the 2023 preseason:

The Crimson Tide’s head coach has spent 3.42% of his total preseason press conference time smiling in 2023. That’s more than double the percentage of any year from 2017 onward…

Based on the data set, there’s little discernible correlation between Saban’s preseason camp smiles and the eventual success of his Alabama teams. While his least smiley season (2020) resulted in an undefeated national championship run, the Crimson Tide also won the title during the year (2017) when he smiled the second most, both by sheer number and percentage of total press conference time.

A media link

At Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick highlights two viral tweets that show how Elon Musk’s revenue-sharing program has changed the incentives of getting dunked on.

In many ways, Musk, through Twitter’s ad revenue share, has made the implicit social consequences of being a Twitter main character explicit. Before Musk, people who went viral for controversial activity were benefitted by it if they fit into existing structures of business, politics, or media, and would thus receive some kind of financial compensation. And those who did not, didn’t... Now, on Musk Twitter, you’re just paid directly by a billionaire — though only if you can afford to pay him first.

There’s no school on Friday or Monday, so you might not hear from me again until Tuesday, unless something wild happens during the game that’s worth newslettering about.

Go Cocks.