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Omaha, Here We Come.... Maybe......

Posted May 5, 2008

I've been a Gamecock for as many of my 25 years as I can remember, and I have often hear Gamecock fans proudly state that "we are the greatest fans around". I do think that we may be the most loyal fans, but I think we are a far cry from the greatest.

Case in point, two weeks ago our baseball team went into Louisiana having won 10 of our last 11, had swept our in-state rivals, and were defiantly Omaha bound. Then we were swept by a hapless LSU team that had no business being on the same field as us the day before we got there.

Now, I'm not one to make a lot of excuses when none exist. LSU beat us in almost every aspect of the game, but what I can't take is the fact that all of our fan base basically deserted our baseball team. I like to post in the message boards a lot and I must tell you that reading what many fans had to say about our team, coaches, and players troubled me to the point of abstaining from going to them.

Then we play Florida the following weekend and lose the first game. I go to the message boards and what do I here? "Now Tanner must go!" "How can we spend all this money on a new baseball stadium and have this kind of team to put in it?", "I can't believe that I thought this team could compete for the SEC this year!"

Now I do agree that the four losses in a row was very out of character for this team, but with that said, I don't think that the "greatest fans around" would totally abandon their team after a skid like that. But this is not the part that really gets to me. The worst part is that after we took two out of three from Florida, the same people who were preaching doom and gloom before now said we should begin planning a trip to Omaha, and the SEC title could be ours.

I love the University of South Carolina. I love my teams. I follow most of our athletics with enough zeal that it might border on obsession, but I can't stand that we have fans who will be with our team one day, and the against them the next. I want our players, coaches, and other fan bases around the country to see us as the most supportive fans, through the good times and the bad. If we can do that, then I think we could be the greatest fans around.