It’s said that apples never fall far from the tree, and in this case, the it’s a proven fact: the son of News and Observer columnist Barry Saunders (whom you might remember for fabricating stories about chants in the RBC) had this to say about his Gamecock’s game in Carter-Finley next Thursday night:
“I’m going to talk to Coach (Steve) Spurrier beforehand and see if he’s OK if I get a 15-yard penalty,” Saunders said. “Because I’m gonna do some sort of extra celebration if I get a touchdown on the Wolfpack.”
Perhaps it is Saunders’ way of trying to get into the heads of the Wolfpack team, or perhaps he means what he says. We’ll see next week.
One has to wonder if this South Carolina coaching staff will be all that keen on supporting obvious poor sportsmanship. Previous regimes certainly didn’t mind it when Gamecock quarterback Todd Ellis (their current radio color man) ran down the NCSU bench in a game here, shooting his index finger at the NC State bench as if he were a gunfighter and the fingers were his six shooters. Irregardless of the fact that is was something one could expect from a four year old child, Ellis’ display made fodder for the ESPN college football commercial for that season, much to Ellis’s delight. Thing is, karma’s a bitch, because on the first play of the next game against NC State, Ellis was sacked, experienced a torn ACL injury and his once-promising career as a player essentially over for good.
I can only imagine what Tom O’Brien’s reaction would be if a player walked into his office asked him if could intentionally get a fifteen yarder for unsportsmanlike conduct. You might be able to hear that for yourself if you were standing beneath the Bell Tower.
