The unfortunate timing of South Carolina athletics’ COVID fortunes running out
South Carolina’s football team played the role of a nifty scat back when it came to dodging COVID-19 issues this season.
The Gamecocks managed to navigate each close call or slip from its grasp. Twice they played teams that went on hiatus the next week. USC had a smattering of players test positive along the way, plus a false positive or two.
There had been issues in the summer, to be sure, but overall the team that sits as the highest-profile on campus managed to stay above water and be one of two SEC teams to play its revamped 2020 schedule that was set in the summer.
But the school’s luck finally turned, first for a men’s basketball team that’s been on hiatus for weeks, and now for the football program that had one more game on the docket, one it wouldn’t be close to playing in a normal year.
Some fans might well have traded much of the regular season for basketball at this point, as the football team went 2-8 and with the noise around Will Muschamp’s job growing so loud he was fired after game No. 7.
In the short term, it’s the bigger shame that the basketball team is in the spot it is. The team has some promising pieces around a core group of three anchors. But those guys who need to find roles, they’ve not had a game since Dec. 5 and won’t play again until the first week of January at the earliest.
That’s a tough road, especially with practice interruptions all over. At points, USC coach Frank Martin wondered if it even made sense to play non-conference games at all, a sentiment that’s popped up across that sport. At this point, more than half that slate for the Gamecocks has been wiped away or postponed (four games, one exhibition).
On the football side, the loss of the bowl is perhaps less impactful. The team was not bowl quality. It was in there because the NCAA loosened the rules and the SEC wanted to fill its obligations to partners.
The players have been through a long season, a trying one because of the COVID restrictions, losing a coach and the general challenges of a losing campaign. They were lucky for a quick turnaround and sprint to play a bowl just six days after the announcement. Their roster was in relatively good shape to pass most of the COVID minimums to play.
But that didn’t cover the coaches. By the accounts of one source and other reports, just about the whole offensive staff was sidelined and in quarantine. There are many ways a team could slog its way through the week, but having almost no offensive coaches wasn’t a realistic plan.
There’s an irony that had COVID disrupted the football schedule at a different point, perhaps the season would’ve been different. Giving up 100 total points in consecutive weeks put Muschamp in the crosshairs, squandering some momentum from a win against Auburn. A shootout loss to Ole Miss provided the final blow. If one of those doesn’t happen, perhaps there’s less heat, or the string gets played out enough that a change waits until next year.
But things didn’t work that way.
Instead, the Gamecocks got good work from the training staff and carried through, and almost to the end. The pandemic, which reshaped so much of the landscape, finally ended things a few days early, and now has the potential to make things even more unusual for Frank Martin and his squad.
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
