How South Carolina blocks out the noise when a social media tsunami rolls in
The noise is there.
Shane Beamer knows it. His staff knows it. His players know it.
In a modern society filled with 24-hour news cycles and the incessant nature of social media, “blocking out” narratives beyond the Long Family Football Operations Center isn’t so much a fool’s errand as it is a stiffer task than it was in the decades prior.
Any inkling of frustration today is given a platform. Keyboard cowboys attack ruthlessly. Videos go viral. Everyone is connected, for better or worse.
No matter how much one tries to completely distance from the general venom in the public sphere, it appears in even the smallest of doses.
“I think the biggest thing for us is, only we know what’s going on inside of this building — only the coaches know what’s going on,” quarterback Luke Doty said Tuesday. “I think really the biggest thing is, tune out all that outside noise and focus on what we have inside this building as far as the players and coaches go, because at the end of the day it’s about us.”
College football teams constantly grapple with outside narratives. Reporters are blamed for creating them. Fans play a part. It’s all part of a persistent rancor that swirls around America’s largest programs in times of good and bad.
At South Carolina, Doty and tight end Nick Muse gave up social media for six months beginning in the spring and encouraged teammates to do the same. A handful of players have kept up that promise, Doty added, and still aren’t tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, or whatever it is the kids do these days.
But even those who do their best to live away from the pressures and critiques of people outside the building’s walls still feel the weight of the world in times of seeming crisis.
Safety Jahmar Brown was the most recent target. On Saturday, in the same game where he blocked a punt and nearly intercepted a pass, Brown scooped up an errant fumble and raced toward the end zone for a touchdown. Upon further review, referees determined he’d dropped the ball short of the goal line, which resulted in a touchback and cost the Gamecocks a touchdown against Troy.
Column inches were devoted to the play. Internet memes and videos of the gaffe circulated nationwide. Facebook pages ascribed to Gamecocks fandom burned with disdain at the fumble and nastily posited whether anyone within the program that’s just five games into a new coaching regime is being held accountable.
The play even drew the “C’mon man!” treatment from ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast two days later.
Tuesday, Brown faced the critics. He stood behind the lectern in the defensive meeting room in South Carolina’s operations building, took the blame on the chin and addressed the masses in a somber but insightful tone.
“I know what I signed up for, especially playing football in the SEC at the highest (level),” Brown said. “I take it with a grain of salt, read a few of (the comments), push them to the side, just keep moving and keep growing.”
That Brown was skewered on social media isn’t fair. No one deserves the vitriol the 20-year-old defensive back received the past few days over something as simple as a game.
But to the second-year safety, and even Beamer, it’s part of what comes with Southeastern Conference football — for better or worse.
Passion festers to the surface in the Deep South over college football. At it’s best, it brings the romance and pageantry we all yearn for on Saturdays in the fall. At its worst, it manifests in the social media attacks Brown received for a simple mistake.
Beamer has spent months preaching about the inevitable end of his “honeymoon phase” and that the fervor and excitement over a new coach would eventually evolve into annoyance and questioning of his decisions.
Combine a pair of losses to Georgia and Kentucky with an offense that has sputtered in spurts and Beamer, his staff and players have certainly felt the wrath of message board posters and internet trolls of late. Brown was simply the latest subject of contempt.
But in an age where acrimony toward coaches and players spills out into social media forums, South Carolina — and Brown in particular — are doing the only thing they can do: moving on.
“Like I told him, I know he feels bad about it,” Beamer said in a nearly three minute response on Tuesday. “We’re not okaying it. It’s not OK. He knows that. But let’s just coach it, correct it and not lose sight of what else he did. He’s not going to let one play define him and we’re not going to let it define him for us either.”
