Scott has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter (this email) year-round and a column during football season that's published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.
Scott Davis: Taneyhill's Legacy Went Beyond Statistics
The mullet.
It was the first thing you noticed about him, the first thing that told you Steve Taneyhill was going to be a different kind of quarterback at South Carolina. He was certainly different.
He was also one of the greatest to ever wear the garnet and black. On our quarterback Mount Rushmore, he's there alongside Connor Shaw, Todd Ellis and Tommy Suggs.
Taneyhill – whose death this week at just 52 after an illness left Gamecock fans stunned and saddened – was always larger than life. To those of us who were in school with him and who watched him play, it seemed impossible to imagine his voice silenced, his ever-present smile no longer flickering.
To this day, he still holds the university records for career completions and touchdown passes, and he's second all-time in career passing yards. But Taneyhill's meaning to a long-beleaguered fan base will always go beyond the on-field accomplishments.
For a program that always seemed to fall short and a fan base that always expected it to, he was a transformational figure, pointing the way towards something different, towards a belief in what was possible here.
He arrived at South Carolina in 1992, which just so happened to be when the football program began play in the Southeastern Conference. It's also when I was attending the university.
If you weren't alive at the time, or don't remember those years, it's hard for me to convey just how uncertain the moment felt for Gamecock fans. The reality is that we weren't sure we belonged in the nation's premier athletic conference, and we were defensive about our place in it.
After a few decades in the wilderness as an independent following the school's hasty withdrawal from the ACC, South Carolina supporters had suffered through the ups and downs of a football program that seemed to have an unfortunate habit of almost disappearing from view for long stretches at a time.
South Carolina football simply wasn't visible nationally: If you lived in the Midwest or the upper East coast, you might not even know the school existed as a major college athletic program. The rest of the world just wasn't seeing us.
I'll never forget Paul Finebaum (much more of a rabble-rouser in the early '90s than the benign father figure of SEC football that he's grown into) repeatedly questioning why the SEC had accepted lowly South Carolina into its ranks. Fans like me entered that '92 season with a chip on our shoulders, desperate to prove to the world that we belonged – that we existed.
Almost inevitably, South Carolina started the season 0-5, looking woefully outclassed in the process.
It looked like it might become the most embarrassing season the program would ever endure, that the haters and doubters would be proven right.
And then, at midseason, a desperate Gamecock head coach Sparky Woods decided to go with the true freshman at quarterback.
He decided to hand the keys to Steve Taneyhill.
A Brash, Exciting Savior
Taneyhill was unlike anyone we'd ever seen or rooted for around here.
He arrived in Columbia as a highly touted quarterback from Pennsylvania, with offers from pretty much the entire world, including from Alabama. In many ways, it seemed mystifying that he'd chosen South Carolina, which had labored unsuccessfully to make a name for itself nationally since the death of Joe Morrison in the '80s.
Taneyhill spoke confidently of leading the program out of the hinterlands of mediocrity. He referred to South Carolina's vaunted SEC peers as though they were merely fellow competitors rather than mystical, all-powerful entities. His on-field reputation preceded him: He was brash, bold, liked to mix it up and liked to get the fans involved, and his stringy long hair flopped out from the back of his helmet.
When he finally got the chance to start and led the Gamecocks to the program's first SEC win in Week 6 of the '92 season over a very good Mississippi State team, it became clear very quickly that he was going to be a legend in Columbia and reviled everywhere else in the conference.
Opposing fans loathed his on-field celebrations. Fans like me couldn't get enough of them. We delighted in every fist pump, every celebratory point to the sidelines, every scream to the heavens after a touchdown throw.
Why?
Because at that moment, we were desperate for a winner. We were desperate for someone – anyone – who could grab this sleepy program by the shoulders and shake it out of the doldrums. Taneyhill did exactly that.
He was our winner, at the exact time when we needed him the most.
A Run for the Ages
By the time the '92 season had ended, the South Carolina program had literally risen from the grave, with Taneyhill's uncontainable confidence rubbing off on his teammates to produce one of the most exciting runs in team history.
The Gamecocks unimaginably won five of their remaining six games, including an electrifying home win against Tennessee that remains one of my most nerve-wracking sports experiences ever. The team's only loss the rest of the way was a nail-biter on the road to Steve Spurrier's Florida – then the most feared team in all of college football – to just miss out on what would have been the most astonishing sprint to a bowl game ever recorded.
But it's what happened up the road in Clemson to close out the season that made Taneyhill one of the most revered Gamecocks of all time. After a touchdown pass, Taneyhill lifted his arms to the heavens. The moment was captured for posterity in a photograph that would grace the team's schedule poster the following season – the quarterback's white jersey outstretched before a sea of orange.
Victory.
I still have that poster.
It once hung on my dorm room wall at South Carolina.
Two years after that moment, when Taneyhill led the Gamecocks to yet another win in Clemson, I found myself storming the Memorial Stadium field with some friends. I was running around the field in a daze, giddy with excitement, when I bumped into a player.
It was Taneyhill.
There was the smile. For a moment, we glanced at each other, and then he high-fived me, a stranger wearing a Gamecock cap.
"It's gonna be a great night tonight in Five Points, isn't it?" he said to me, before pushing on through the mob.
It sure was.
Tell me your memories of Steve Taneyhill by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com. (Please do not reply to this email.)
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