South Carolina basketball urging more fans to attend games

The University of South Carolina's men's basketball team has - to put it nicely - struggled in recent years.

Since the turn of the century, the Gamecocks have made only five postseason appearances, four in the NIT (winning in 2005 and 2006), and one NCAA Tournament appearance in 2004.  Most of that success was under former head coach Dave Odom, who was at the helm from 2002-2008.

He was replaced by Darrin Horn, who, quite frankly, gradually ran the program into the ground.  After posting a 21-10 mark in his first season - USC's one winning season under his leadership, Horn's teams gradually got worse until they posted a 10-21 record in the 2011-2012 season.  Horn was fired upon the season's conclusion.

Worse than the losing was the irrelevancy the Gamecock basketball program slipped into under Horn, which resulted in a steep drop in attendance.

Frank Martin has been tasked with turning
South Carolina's program around

South Carolina was averaging 11,776 fans per game when Horn took over the program (still only a fraction of Colonial Life Arena's 18,000 person capacity), but that mark stooped to 8,868 in his last season.

USC addressed the problem by hiring the fiery Frank Martin from Kansas State, where he made the postseason in all five of seasons (4 NCAA Tournament appearances, 1 NIT).

The Wildcat program had historically struggled, but the team won over 20 games in every one of Martin's five seasons and posted a cumulative record of 117-54.

South Carolina's hope was that Martin would be able to rejuvenate the program and the distancing fan base the same way he did at Kansas State.

Last year in his first season, the Gamecocks posted a measly 14-18 record, and attendance was just over 8,600 fans per game.

However, Martin appears to have the program on the upswing, bringing in one of the best freshman classes in school history.

The team is expected to be better on the court in the 2013-14 season, and the university is taking measures off the court to try and get fans, particularly students, back into the arena.  Giveaways and incentives, such as double loyalty points towards football tickets given to students, have been introduced to try and energize the fan base.

But will it work?  Two USC seniors debate with some input from Frank Martin on the problem.

The Gamecocks opened their season with a 82-44 victory over Longwood in front of 8,536 fans before losing 66-64 on the road to a Baylor team ranked No. 23 in the country.

Only time will tell if the measures taken by the university will work, but one thing that is sure to get fans back into seats is for the Gamecocks to start winning again.

It's not the ending the BCS needs, but it's the one it deserves

My friends, we have a logjam at the top of the college football world.

When the BCS was put into place in the late 90's, it was created with the purpose of putting the two best teams in college football on the field together to play for a national championship.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what if we can't figure out who the two best teams are?

I laid out the reasons why I think college football needs an expansive playoff system before this season started, but this year is the best case yet.

Let's look at the top.  If the season were to end right now, Alabama and Florida State would play for the national title in the BCS Championship Game, and it would be a great game featuring two great teams worthy of that honor.  Alabama is the two-time defending champs who have yet to lose in 2013, and the Seminoles have absolutely dismantled everyone they've played, including two top ten victories by 37 and 27 points.

But that'd leave Oregon out, even though they started the year ranking No. 2 and are beating opponents by an average of 38.7 points per game.  It'd also leave out Ohio State, who hasn't lost a game in two years.

This scenario seems more fitted for next year, when the BCS is scrapped and the "plus-1" formatting, or 4-team playoff, comes into effect.  

However, that 4-team playoff would still leave many deserving teams out.

Take Baylor for instance.  They're No. 6 in the country, undefeated, and are averaging over 63 points and over 700 yards per game - and they're not even remotely in the BCS championship picture, and would be out of the 4-team playoff.

The only way to go wrong in the
Oregon-FSU debate is to
only pick one

So would an undefeated Northern Illinois team, who's only loss last year was the very Florida State team mentioned above (with the exception of the Seminole's starting quarterback against NIU being the Buffalo Bills current starter instead of this year's freshman sensation).  

Fresno State would also fall into this category, as they're trying to be the 2013 version of conference rival Boise State.

And none of that seems fair to me.  Baylor is obviously the most compelling case being from a major conference, but how are the Northern Illinois' and Fresno State's not even given a chance?  You can't tell those kids every game matters, because when they go out and win them all, they'll still end up playing in some shit bowl game in front of 20,000 people at 2:00 p.m. on Christmas Day on ESPNU.