Gamecockcentral.com - Scott Davis: My Feelings Are Facts
A couple of months ago, my wife was out of town for the weekend, and I decided to spend an entire Saturday watching all of Christopher Guest’s faux documentary comedies back-to-back on Hulu. What can I tell you – I lead an incredibly exciting life.
You know these movies: “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration,” and the immortal “Waiting for Guffman.” This silly collection is a touchstone of sorts for me, a reliable go-to whenever I need a pick-me-up, a port in the storm.
Guest employs a regular repertory company of cast members for his films, and my favorite of the talented bunch has always been Parker Posey, a fellow Southerner and the kind of spunky performer who would have been described in my hometown as “a little stick of dynamite.”
On a whim after my lonely Mockumentary Saturday, I zipped over to Amazon and bought Posey’s recent memoir “You’re On An Airplane.” It ended up being one of the great, random Worldwide Pandemic impulse purchases I’ve made the last few months. Like the actress herself, the memoir is kooky, strange, charming, comforting. Reading Posey’s oddball tales is like sitting down on the couch to listen to life stories from your favorite wacky, eccentric aunt.
Describing one of her most memorable movie characters – the psychotic rising high school senior Darla in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” – Posey writes, brilliantly, “She was one of those ‘my feelings are facts’ people – one of those drama queens.”
Ah, yes. We know “my feelings are facts” people, don’t we, Gamecock fans?
We are “my feelings are facts” people. Fans are the ultimate drama queens, forever lost in the wilderness of emotion and passion.
And this week, following a demoralizing, “I’m questioning everything” blowout loss, Gamecock fans have been swept up in their feelings more intensely than at any other time during the Will Mushcamp Era.
Throughout Muschamp’s five years at the helm in Columbia, I’ve noticed that I return to a set of feelings and presumptions again and again. It seems like certain annoying things happen to the Gamecocks over and over, that some of the worst habits really do die hard for this team.
Of course, in the Age of Analytics, we’ve been programmed to question our feelings repeatedly, to the point that it sometimes seems like analytics exist solely to change our minds about these popular fan conceptions. The analytical age brings us riveting exchanges like this: That receiver that seems to drop passes 15 times a game? You know what – actually, he’s not really any worse than any other receiver, and the numbers prove it.
I used to think my feelings were facts when I watched sports. Now I don’t know for sure.
And after a 48-3 whipping, it seems like a great time to examine them.
Just the Facts, Ma’am
So what are some of my feelings, and which ones are facts and which ones are fiction?
Let’s find out, or at least try to (and as always, these are simply the opinions of one Gamecock fan, gleaned from watching many, many quarters of South Carolina football since 2016, and do not, in any way, represent anything resembling a definitive account of the Will Muschamp Years).
Feeling #1 – South Carolina football is, on the whole, relatively boring to watch right now. I’ve written this before, perhaps most controversially in a column last year that – in an interesting twist – arrived following yet another demoralizing loss to Texas A&M and generated a week of hate mail from some extremely defensive Gamecock fans.
Now, this is the definition of a feeling, right? As all-encompassing as the analytics community has become in sports, it has not reached the capacity for giving us statistical evidence that a team is boring or exciting (at least I don’t think it has). No doubt about it, this is definitely just my opinion.
But let’s at least try to unearth some actual evidence for my feelings. For starters, what games stand out to you from the Will Muschamp Era? The most memorable wins that come to my mind are last year’s victory Between the Hedges against Georgia, and this year’s win over Auburn. Both of these games were exciting in an agonizing “this is coming down to the wire” kind of way, but was South Carolina’s performance in either of them particularly riveting? Were they freewheeling, innovative, forward-thinking performances that left you breathless (like many of Steve Spurrier’s wins were)?
From an offensive standpoint, the answer is an emphatic “no.” Both games featured middling-to-anemic offensive performances from the Gamecocks, ones that relied on the running game and almost nothing meaningful from the quarterbacks. The Carolina defense made big plays in both (and those plays ended up being the difference), but they also gave up chunks of yards for long stretches. If an average football fan who didn’t care about either team stumbled upon one of these two games on the SEC Network, they wouldn’t have thought, “Wow, this is what college football is all about right here!” Both wins ended up seeming like flukes after the fact: South Carolina didn’t follow up either one with anything resembling momentum.
Indeed, from an offensive standpoint, the two most interesting performances I can think of during Muschamp’s reign have been South Carolina losses: The 56-35 whipping by Clemson in 2018, and that wild shootout in the 2016 Birmingham Bowl that USC lost 46-39 to South Florida. You can certainly win games as a boring football team, but if you’re losing a lot of games and unexciting? That’s not a good combo.
The Verdict: Fact. When your most exciting moments of the last five years have been in losses, I think it’s fairly safe to say you’re not a spellbinding football program.
Feeling #2: South Carolina is a “By the Book” Team in Ways That Are Incredibly Depressing to Watch. Again, we’re most definitely in the realm of feelings here. And it’s hard to quantify these kinds of statements. But one of the key innovations that analytics brought to sports was a shattering of hidebound, “by the book” thinking. In other words, baseball managers used to bunt and call hit-and-run’s because…well, that’s the way they always did things. But in the last few decades, a deeper understanding of the numbers helped us recognize that those tactics did little to impact the game in a positive fashion. So we stopped doing those things.
In football, analytics helped us understand a couple of basic realities: You should go for it on fourth down a lot more than most head coaches do, and routinely settling for field goals instead of touchdowns is really not a good thing.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have any numbers in front of me. But my goodness, does it ever seem like South Carolina settles for punts or field goal attempts on fourth down far more often than is necessary. At the very least, can we agree that this program is not currently at the vanguard of trying bold, audacious methods for winning football games? And if so, isn’t that a problem?
The Verdict: Incomplete. While I’m sure that there’s a statistician somewhere who can muster evidence that USC really doesn’t kick too many field goals or punt too often, my heart just won’t be swayed. I’m clinging to this feeling until someone presents definitive proof that I’m wrong.
A couple of months ago, my wife was out of town for the weekend, and I decided to spend an entire Saturday watching all of Christopher Guest’s faux documentary comedies back-to-back on Hulu. What can I tell you – I lead an incredibly exciting life.
You know these movies: “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration,” and the immortal “Waiting for Guffman.” This silly collection is a touchstone of sorts for me, a reliable go-to whenever I need a pick-me-up, a port in the storm.
Guest employs a regular repertory company of cast members for his films, and my favorite of the talented bunch has always been Parker Posey, a fellow Southerner and the kind of spunky performer who would have been described in my hometown as “a little stick of dynamite.”
On a whim after my lonely Mockumentary Saturday, I zipped over to Amazon and bought Posey’s recent memoir “You’re On An Airplane.” It ended up being one of the great, random Worldwide Pandemic impulse purchases I’ve made the last few months. Like the actress herself, the memoir is kooky, strange, charming, comforting. Reading Posey’s oddball tales is like sitting down on the couch to listen to life stories from your favorite wacky, eccentric aunt.
Describing one of her most memorable movie characters – the psychotic rising high school senior Darla in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” – Posey writes, brilliantly, “She was one of those ‘my feelings are facts’ people – one of those drama queens.”
Ah, yes. We know “my feelings are facts” people, don’t we, Gamecock fans?
We are “my feelings are facts” people. Fans are the ultimate drama queens, forever lost in the wilderness of emotion and passion.
And this week, following a demoralizing, “I’m questioning everything” blowout loss, Gamecock fans have been swept up in their feelings more intensely than at any other time during the Will Mushcamp Era.
Throughout Muschamp’s five years at the helm in Columbia, I’ve noticed that I return to a set of feelings and presumptions again and again. It seems like certain annoying things happen to the Gamecocks over and over, that some of the worst habits really do die hard for this team.
Of course, in the Age of Analytics, we’ve been programmed to question our feelings repeatedly, to the point that it sometimes seems like analytics exist solely to change our minds about these popular fan conceptions. The analytical age brings us riveting exchanges like this: That receiver that seems to drop passes 15 times a game? You know what – actually, he’s not really any worse than any other receiver, and the numbers prove it.
I used to think my feelings were facts when I watched sports. Now I don’t know for sure.
And after a 48-3 whipping, it seems like a great time to examine them.
Just the Facts, Ma’am
So what are some of my feelings, and which ones are facts and which ones are fiction?
Let’s find out, or at least try to (and as always, these are simply the opinions of one Gamecock fan, gleaned from watching many, many quarters of South Carolina football since 2016, and do not, in any way, represent anything resembling a definitive account of the Will Muschamp Years).
Feeling #1 – South Carolina football is, on the whole, relatively boring to watch right now. I’ve written this before, perhaps most controversially in a column last year that – in an interesting twist – arrived following yet another demoralizing loss to Texas A&M and generated a week of hate mail from some extremely defensive Gamecock fans.
Now, this is the definition of a feeling, right? As all-encompassing as the analytics community has become in sports, it has not reached the capacity for giving us statistical evidence that a team is boring or exciting (at least I don’t think it has). No doubt about it, this is definitely just my opinion.
But let’s at least try to unearth some actual evidence for my feelings. For starters, what games stand out to you from the Will Muschamp Era? The most memorable wins that come to my mind are last year’s victory Between the Hedges against Georgia, and this year’s win over Auburn. Both of these games were exciting in an agonizing “this is coming down to the wire” kind of way, but was South Carolina’s performance in either of them particularly riveting? Were they freewheeling, innovative, forward-thinking performances that left you breathless (like many of Steve Spurrier’s wins were)?
From an offensive standpoint, the answer is an emphatic “no.” Both games featured middling-to-anemic offensive performances from the Gamecocks, ones that relied on the running game and almost nothing meaningful from the quarterbacks. The Carolina defense made big plays in both (and those plays ended up being the difference), but they also gave up chunks of yards for long stretches. If an average football fan who didn’t care about either team stumbled upon one of these two games on the SEC Network, they wouldn’t have thought, “Wow, this is what college football is all about right here!” Both wins ended up seeming like flukes after the fact: South Carolina didn’t follow up either one with anything resembling momentum.
Indeed, from an offensive standpoint, the two most interesting performances I can think of during Muschamp’s reign have been South Carolina losses: The 56-35 whipping by Clemson in 2018, and that wild shootout in the 2016 Birmingham Bowl that USC lost 46-39 to South Florida. You can certainly win games as a boring football team, but if you’re losing a lot of games and unexciting? That’s not a good combo.
The Verdict: Fact. When your most exciting moments of the last five years have been in losses, I think it’s fairly safe to say you’re not a spellbinding football program.
Feeling #2: South Carolina is a “By the Book” Team in Ways That Are Incredibly Depressing to Watch. Again, we’re most definitely in the realm of feelings here. And it’s hard to quantify these kinds of statements. But one of the key innovations that analytics brought to sports was a shattering of hidebound, “by the book” thinking. In other words, baseball managers used to bunt and call hit-and-run’s because…well, that’s the way they always did things. But in the last few decades, a deeper understanding of the numbers helped us recognize that those tactics did little to impact the game in a positive fashion. So we stopped doing those things.
In football, analytics helped us understand a couple of basic realities: You should go for it on fourth down a lot more than most head coaches do, and routinely settling for field goals instead of touchdowns is really not a good thing.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have any numbers in front of me. But my goodness, does it ever seem like South Carolina settles for punts or field goal attempts on fourth down far more often than is necessary. At the very least, can we agree that this program is not currently at the vanguard of trying bold, audacious methods for winning football games? And if so, isn’t that a problem?
The Verdict: Incomplete. While I’m sure that there’s a statistician somewhere who can muster evidence that USC really doesn’t kick too many field goals or punt too often, my heart just won’t be swayed. I’m clinging to this feeling until someone presents definitive proof that I’m wrong.
