A Gamecock admits, ‘a lot of anger built up.’ Things changed Saturday

For a few minutes in a news conference on Saturday, South Carolina tight end Kiel Pollard got real.

He showed a side of college football. A different perspective from the one most folks see, an emotional window into the behind the scenes struggles many players work their way through.

“What a lot of folks don’t see is when players leave high school, they leave as gods,” Pollard said. “When they go to college, it’s so hard for them to get on the field. It just takes so much support. I got so much support from my teammates, from people back home, my parents, and that’s what you really need.

“They make it real easy for me.”

But the last two years haven’t been all that easy, and that’s what made Saturday all the more meaningful for him.

Pollard spoke about his frustrations during spring practice. He came to Columbia as an exciting prospect in Will Muschamp’s first recruiting class. He was the best offensive player in the biggest classification in Georgia, playing for a state title on a national powerhouse.

Then for two years, he worked and he waited.

He played here and there, special teams work, a few snaps, maybe a few more in garbage time. But he’d come somewhere to play football, and he just wasn’t playing much.

He summed it up back in spring as concisely as one could: He didn’t come to Columbia not to play.

“It’s a lot of anger built up, two years sitting on the bench,” Pollard said. “When I got the ball, I wasn’t going down.”

Early against Coastal Carolina on Saturday, he didn’t.

In the first quarter, USC quarterback Jake Bentley found himself in trouble. He thought he could run into space, but a defender worked off a block and grabbed a hold of him. He looked up, and saw Pollard close.

After Pollard secured the ball 7 yards from the end zone, he was not to be denied, powering through several tackles to score his first college touchdown.

The coaches have praised him throughout the offseason, and where things go now remains to be seen. USC still played him, Jacob August and K.C. Crosby a fair amount Saturday, and that was against a team the Gamecocks were manhandling. Coaches tend to tighten things in bigger games, and that’s a lot of competition.

He’ll have to keep at it, the way did when he wasn’t getting time and the way that earned the respect of his teammates.

“My man wears two pairs of cleats,” Gamecocks coach Jake Bentley said. “Brings two pairs of cleats to practice because that’s how hard he works. He’s probably the hardest worker on the team, day-in and day-out. He hasn’t let the situation that he’s had affect him and his work ethic. It’s a testament to how he was raised and his character.”

This story was originally published September 2, 2018 at 11:24 AM.