How did the Gamecocks topple the No. 1 college football team in the nation? Well, I’ll tell ya…
Saturday was the first time I watched an entire Gamecocks football game ever. So of course, it follows that they had their biggest win since I moved back to SC in 1987.
As you know, I’m not a football fan. But I now have HDTV in my house. I got the TV for my birthday, and Thursday the cable guy spent 7 hours at my house hauling it out of the 18th century. So this was the first Saturday since I got HD, and as I always suspected, I DID get interested in football once I had HD. Something about the color and spectacle of it, rendering in super-sharp digital imagery. (“Hyper-intense eye candy,” as I described it after the first time I experienced it.) A true case of the medium being the message, I guess.
And I enjoyed it. I say again, I’m not a football fan, but there’s a certain enjoyment to be had in watching someone do something well. Back when I was a reporter and sometimes helped out the sports department by covering a game for them in one of the rural counties I covered, I used to always sit in the stands — the press box held no charms for me — and when there was a good play by either team, I’d get so into it, I’d stand up to applaud. Which was awkward if the stands I happened to be sitting in was occupied by fans of the opposite team.
And on Saturday, we saw Stephen Garcia (selected as national Offensive Player of the Week by the Walter Camp Football Foundation), Marcus Lattimore and the rest of the boys playing football just as it should be played. Which was fun to watch.
Oh, and if you doubt that they won because I was watching, here’s proof: I didn’t quite watch the entire game. I wandered away from the TV during halftime, and missed the beginning of the second half. Yes, I was out of the room when Garcia bizarrely threw for a safety. In other words, the Chicken Curse briefly asserted itself when I wasn’t watching.
As a new business model for the blog, I may turn from advertising and instead get Gamecock fans to pay me to watch every minute of every game in the future. If the price is right, and it’s on HD, I just might do it…
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“Saturday was the first time I watched an entire Gamecocks football team ever.”
I daresay you could watch the entire football *team* in Five Points many weekends, but I suspect it’s the actual game that made the difference. The Shop Tart is claiming that when she naps through a game, they win.
Better keep watching Brad…
Plez don’t miss another play. Then again, that bit of drama in the fourth quarter made the end result even that much better.
As for the HDTV, it really does make for a grand viewing experience.
Well, then, thank you!
Be careful Brad. SEC football is more a religion than a game. Bizarre rituals, incantations, warring factions, entrenched iconography, doomsday prophecies and promised lands. Are you truly ready for that?
It could mean sprinkling salt on the pavement of Memorial Stadium’s parking lot at 3AM in a beak doctor’s mask.
It’s bad luck to be superstitious, but please keep watching.
And thank you.
Third quarter, Bud, it was the third quarter. When I think what I was like as a college kid, I wonder how any of them do as well as they do. Well, I’m a slow processor, so I’m amazed at any quarterback who can halfway make decisions, especially with 300 lb linemen breathing down his neck . . . .
Speaking of processors, did you any of you people that happen to watch evening network news broadcasts see that car that drives on its own? If Microsoft has anything to do with the computer software, I’m staying off the road.
Herb, you are correct, it was the third quarter. But the Tide did score quickly in the fourth quarter to raise my blood pressure again.
BRAD, COME BACK TO THE TV!!!!!! I’m guessing maybe you fell asleep about halftime in the Kentucky game. Please wake up, we have about a minute left.
@ Herb–
Control-Alt-Delete on that car!
I did see that car on the news – I believe it was Google running it, not microsoft. Either way, I’m planning to steer clear if I can help it.