A lesson Sandidge took from Year 1 at USC: ‘You’re going to get thrown on your butt’
South Carolina coach Will Muschamp joked last week, the word redshirt has become a dirty one in college football. Everyone wants to play, especially your top recruits with the lofty rankings and all the stars.
Rick Sandidge was that prospect and he got that chance. He was the top-rated member of the the Gamecocks’ 2018 class and he got on the field a good bit.
A few months removed from his freshman campaign, he was plenty honest about getting thrown into the fire on an SEC team.
“I wasn’t nowhere near ready,” Sandidge said. “But it was a learning experience, really.”
That to a degree is life for almost every freshman on a college football team. They’ve come up being the biggest, the strongest, the best. They don’t often meet players with the talent they have.
Then they meet a lot of them, most who have years of college-level weight room work and a few years on them.
Sandidge didn’t get much easing in. His second game involved facing the wall of earth movers from Georgia, a group that paved the way for its top five runners to average between 5.9 and 6.9 yards per carry.
“That right there was not fair at all,” Sandidge said. “But life isn’t fair, so this season coming up, we’ve got two big-time SEC teams in Alabama, Georgia. At the end of the day, I chose to play in the SEC, so I have to deal with that.”
That echoes a statement from Muschamp, that Sandidge and a freshman teammate weren’t really put in the most fair position. But they persevered, took their lumps and moved forward.
Sandidge finished his freshman year with 19 tackles. He was in on a crucial sack against Ole Miss. He said his best game probably came against Clemson, but he also left some opportunities out there against some of the worse teams on the Gamecocks schedule.
This spring, he’s been working on flexibility. He said he’s felt a bit of a turning point this spring. More often, he’s hearing Muschamp shout out his name when handing out “great effort of the day” plaudits.
He’ll be battling with a deep group, one that includes Javon Kinlaw, Kobe Smith, Devontae Davis, Jabari Ellis and Zacch Pickens. But as he takes steps forward, aims to take on a more starring role, the humbling lessons of a year thrown in the deep end stay with him.
“You’ve got to go through it,” Sandidge said. “You’re going to get thrown on your butt. No matter how good you are, it’s going to happen to you one day.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 12:14 PM.
