How ‘Luke Doty Thursday’ came to be for South Carolina, Mike Bobo
When Luke Doty took over as South Carolina’s quarterback a couple weeks ago against Missouri, the true freshman signal caller brought a noticeable jolt of energy and excitement to a struggling offense, to the point that interim coach Mike Bobo and his teammates noted it afterward.
As it turns out, Doty’s been providing that energy and enthusiasm for USC for quite some time now.
During the Gamecocks’ contest against Georgia this past Saturday, SEC Network sideline reporter Alyssa Lang described how Bobo has a tradition of calling Thursdays “Positive Thursdays” but had taken to calling them “Luke Doty Thursdays” this year. Bobo explained the reasoning behind “Positive Thursdays,” and how they’ve come to take on Doty’s name.
“Sometimes I’m a negative person. I’ll be positive in a meeting (but) sometimes I’m always harping on the little things that we got to do right and so, a while back, I was coaching at another place, I decided to make Thursday ‘Positive Thursday.’ You know, it’ll be positive, I’ll say nothing (but) positive, we’ll get it right,” Bobo said Tuesday when speaking with reporters. “So it’s always been ‘Positive Thursday’ for me on Thursdays to get myself right going into going into Saturday. But when I came here, Luke Doty, it doesn’t matter whether he threw a pick or misread something, he is the most positive guy in the world. So I changed it to ‘Luke Doty Thursday’ because he’s positive. That’s the story.”
While Bobo makes a concerted effort to be positive one day of the week, Doty is like that all the time, one of his teammates said.
“Man, I’m telling you when it comes to Luke Doty, it’s Luke Doty Thursday, but I think it’s every day,” redshirt sophomore receiver Dakereon Joyner said. “The guy comes with so much energy — positive Thursday, positive Wednesday, just always being positive. I think that’s a guy that you love to play with, you know what I’m saying? Because the guy brings so much excitement to the game, brings so much energy. Anyone that does that, at such a young age, you can’t knock him for it.”
Doty came to South Carolina as four-star recruit from Myrtle Beach High School, one of the top-ranked dual-threat quarterbacks in the class of 2020. Not long after he got to Columbia, he moved out to wide receiver to help USC’s depth issues at the position and earned praised from his coaches for his willingness to do whatever it took to help the team, even going so far as to volunteer for special teams work. That enthusiasm and positive mindset were molded at a young age, he said.
“I think I’ve always approached the game with that mindset, just to go out there and bring as much energy as I can,” Doty said. “I think it goes back to playing soccer with my dad, when my dad was a coach when I was little. He’d always start practice by just saying, ‘Have fun.’ And I think that’s definitely carried over obviously from high school, from little leagues to where I am now. Just to go out there and bring a lot of energy to the practice field no matter what’s going on, and bring a lot of energy to the game field on Saturdays.”
Doty spent most of the first half of the season on the bench as graduate transfer Collin Hill won the starting QB job. He did start to earn some snaps in a few special packages before the firing of coach Will Muschamp. The next week against Missouri, Bobo benched Hill after the first half and went with Doty, who has now thrown for 320 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions in one and a half games.
But despite the difficult season, all coming amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Doty’s enthusiasm hasn’t waned. And with one more game still to play against Kentucky, there’s one final “Luke Doty Thursday.”
“That’s really what you come to play in this league for, is the competition. And I definitely think we’ve done that this year. We’ve had chances to compete against some some really good teams, and like I said, I think we’ve done just that,” Doty said. “And we’ve got another chance to go out there and compete on Saturday. And I know we’re going to get the job done, so we’re excited about that.”
