USC Gamecocks: Is This Year Finally ‘Next Year’?

It was a familiar story. Watching a bowl game that wasn’t the one we should be in slip away quickly, capping a season that we consider great, but others consider good. And the familiar phrase “we’ll get ‘em next year.”

Is 2012 finally the “next year” Gamecocks fans always talk about? The one with an SEC Championship, a BCS bowl, or even something better? According to the LA Times (Get Cocky, South Carolina) and The Bleacher Report (S. Carolina defeats Oregon for National Championship) it just may be. Even the more sane predictions look good.

So what’s an experienced Gamecocks Fan to make of all of this? For me, I’m going to look at things differently for once.

A Year Without Lowered Expectations.

As a Gamecocks fan it’s always best to lower your expectations. Don’t get too excited. Assume we’ll start strong and then collapse. Or if we don’t assume we’ll make it to the big game and then implode. But what if, for once, we just believed? If we were to just assume we’ll win (like the fans of perennial college football powerhouses do) and we don’t win, so what? I’m pretty certain my thinking we’ve got a winner won’t have any effect on if we win, so why not enjoy the season.

We’ve played the underdog role before. It hasn’t really helped. Maybe this year we’re the team to beat.

A unique opportunity that comes along very rarely (and even more rarely for Gamecocks fans) of having the right players and the right schedule to win the toughest conference in college football. In the past I’ve looked the schedule up and down figuring out how we can recover from a Florida loss or a Bama loss. But not this year. This year I’m going to expect the win, not be surprised.

And this year, unlike so many others, our season isn’t defined by beating Clemson. Sure it would be awesome, but the ultimate prize should now be the ultimate prize. The SEC Championship ring. Clemson has little to do with that. Beating them but not winning it all will hopefully be a disappointment, not a consolation prize.

So I’m going to be the confident Gamecocks fan this year. What has a fan got to lose? Disappointment? Been there already. We’ve got one of the best teams in the land. If we meet our potential and play with the one thing we have had that other teams haven’t as much – heart – I hope that when it’s all said and done we’ll be able to say:

“We got ‘em THIS year.”