There’s a bad mood problem settling in for the Will Muschamp era at South Carolina
A theory was once posed by longtime college basketball writer Gary Parrish about coaches who lose their fans. He posited that a coach’s mindset is that with enough winning, with that one get-right season, he can earn his way back into the good graces of the fan base.
And in the end, that coach is always one bad upset or one bad season from being right back in the doghouse, catching hell and venom at every turn. His example, Tom Crean, got jeered at his own child’s basketball game. Good will is built slowly and burned quickly, and when the hope of a coaching staff’s early tenure is gone, it’s gone.
Will Muschamp’s South Carolina football team heard a cascade of boos Saturday night in the midst of a 48-3 loss to Texas A&M. Some fans even chanted for his firing. That’s not so surprising in the midst of a blowout that was not competitive from the start, but the acrid and toxic tone of how things are going has ramped up of late.
That happens when two conference teams combine to hang a hundred points on your defense over two games — LSU beat USC 52-24 on Oct. 24 — and when the offense can’t keep up for one full half out of four.
Muschamp said he empathized with the fans, noting he wanted them to be pissed off after the team’s last two performances. One of his players, Ernest Jones, said the players heard the boos but didn’t really see how they were productive.
But when a team makes a habit of putting its fans in a deeply bad mood by halftime, a toxic atmosphere tends to build.
To a degree, small-scale PR isn’t highly important to a college football team — that’s because winning is just about everything. But when the wins aren’t there, the moves a coach makes on the edges can matter.
Not revealing injured or missing players right up until kickoff means each game starts with an unpleasant surprise. Fans crave seeing a young, shiny QB throw — having a starter out there deep into a blowout won’t help. (Muschamp has grasped the PR value of telling fans and recruits how many freshmen play each season.)
Would playing Luke Doty down 34 points or revealing all injuries fix things? Probably not, but it would take away a bit of acrimony on the edges.
The Gamecocks have four more games this 10-game regular season. Georgia seems like a big-time long shot, and every other game won’t be easy. Win three more games? The mood might get better. Two keeps Muschamp at the current level of lost fan base. One or no victories, and things become highly morose.
And whatever that is would be almost guaranteed to linger.
Average angry fans don’t get coaches fired unless people just stop showing up at games. Angry fans with large bank accounts can affect things, but USC is fresh off tapping folks for a $50 million football facility. Meanwhile, a lot of people aren’t in good shape during the COVID pandemic.
That includes the athletic department, which might have to borrow to cover a $50 million revenue shortfall. Moving on from a staff means paying out up to $8 million next year alone (the final total will be less but still hefty), plus paying for a new staff that wouldn’t be cheap.
That’s a lot to ask for.
Muschamp isn’t in position to leave, not only because he still professes to believe he can still pull things together but because this is, in some ways, a last chance. Few schools are hiring defensive coaches, let alone ones that left multiple SEC schools, including a national power in Florida, in bad spots. His head coaching career at big schools might last as long as his time in Columbia, barring a turnaround.
So chances are, this staff has nearly a season and a half left. Maybe 2021 is a lame duck year, the sort that slogs out to the end. Maybe he finds that magic and can hold on for more seasons.
But coming off two weekends that left Gamecocks in stormy bad moods, it’s going to take a hell of a lot.
South Carolina 2020 football schedule
Sept. 26: Tennessee 31, South Carolina 27
Oct. 3: Florida 38, South Carolina 24
Oct. 10: South Carolina 41, Vanderbilt 7
Oct. 17: South Carolina 30, Auburn 11
Oct. 24: LSU 52, South Carolina 24
Oct. 31: OPEN
Nov. 7: Texas A&M 48, South Carolina 3
Nov. 14: at Ole Miss, 7:30 p.m., SEC Network
Nov. 21: vs. Missouri
Nov. 28: vs. Georgia
Dec. 5: at Kentucky
