The Crop’s Gotta Crop
“That will be $12.99 plus tax ma’am, don’t forget your sweet tea.” the cashier said with a fresh grin.
As a young man to a single mom, money had to stretch a long way. South Carolina isn’t known, during the 90’s at least, for its equitable treatment of young women scraping by. But somehow, she managed a handful of cash to take Steven and me to the USC/ECU game. I remember the heat, the rusty, industrial warehouse that littered Assembly St. where the Capital Bombers played. It wasn’t much, and the seats were just below the pearly gates, but Williams-Brice was rocking. A grizzled man leaned over and told me “if it ain’t swayin’, we ain’t playing.” At the beginning of the game, he might have been right, but the mighty pirates from up the road laid the smackdown that day. Swayin’ was more about the people there than the product Sparky Woods drummed up.
Steve found a hat with a Steve Taneyhill ponytail woven into the back, and I was just content to hear Space Odyssey 2001 for the first of many, many times. There was no Sandstorm, only a putrid Carolina Gamecocks football team cheered by 80,000 people and the Mighty Sound of the Southeast. It was hot, hot, hot. My mother’s cheeks were rosier than I thought a person’s could be, but our big buck teeth were getting their bleaching atop the city.
We drove from somewhere, I think Camden. We bounced around a lot as my mom struggled to keep work. Regardless, this was a treat rare for people in our station. We loved the team, the university, our state, and even though the team was in a perpetual sputter, it meant we could overcome. Dum spiro spero, amirite. Besides the stadium was getting extra amped up because the Gamecocks had them dirty ol’dawgs from across the way next week, provided our team survived the severe asswhipping they were catching this September day. I hated UGA. My biological father loved them, even though he was from upstate South Carolina. As one might imagine, my rage would intensify over the years. The last time I saw him, he was parading in front of us, singing something about a long black train with an occasional bark. We’ll have more about this later.
There was something special about local heroes and mystical plays. Guys from Andrews, Lockhart, Bennettsville made the team. There were never players from the west coast unless he jacked up his college application meant for LA, which they are want to do. Local players, local trips, and local rivalries are what made this deeper than a weekend ballgame. It was my birthright. I was taught early to hate orange by my uncles, of Woodruff lore. Or at least that was the myth. Phillip told me he “sat on the end of the bench, and tackled anyone that got near the water jug.” I loved that. It wasn’t a puffed up chest, but a self deprecating story that embodied the struggles of the state and the sorry football team.
The state of the state was weak. The state of the football team was weaker. Frankly, we were all still reeling from Hugo. The lowcountry all but washed away and the Robalo fishing boat my great-grandfather prized, remained about the only thing untouched on Ashley Boulevard, covered by the sturdiest shed in SC. But thinking this was it, wasn’t going to suffice; it’s not how we were raised and not why the university honored Sumter. The governor drafted landmark 1992 expansion of BMW right up the street from where my great-grandparents ran a Tasty Freeze for two decades. Things might be looking up.
People began flooding the state as the Germans promised schooling, even for the school in Pickens county. Along with them came strong, blue-collar jobs where people could start affording a few more trips to Columbia. The transformation was well underway. It was bigger than just one firm though, as seemingly infinite suppliers and local purveyors started cropping up. Now we needed schools, grocers, a better I-85 connecting the two mill towns Spartanburg and Greenville. Textiles went the way of the dodo, or rather, packed up and mailed to Indonesia. Good thing the new jobs showed up, else everyone would have been out of work. Of course, there were only so many to go around and the rest of the neighboring towns, those without a Spartan Steel, were fresh out of luck, state, region-wide.
People logged their hours, bought their groceries, even rented their homes from the company store for decades. The textile shops were giver and taker, omnipotent in ways, too. Ford told us the story about the absolute power these enterprises have across their Southern domiciles. Unlike unions, there was no bartering or negotiating just how much of one’s paycheck was scrapped off the top. Many of these were literally the only show in town, the only place for diapers, a recliner, or cabbage for Sundays. When they left, the spero went in hand. Was there anything these backwoods or swampfolk could do other than run a loom for Wrangler? The truth was, not for many of the cities. The combination of violent gale and the factories being exported, what was left were shuttered 76 gas stations.
The debts expanded for employees, some owing more than their wages which compelled forced labor. The adjacent sharecroppers, like my family, prayed furious for rains and extra bushels of soybeans, or peanuts. Commercialization of food production wasn’t something happening in Sardis, SC, and they needed it, a lot of it apparently. I remember a man in a suit trying to coax an unconditional sale of the entire crop before we knew what we were looking like. With it came a check of $10,000.00, a ransom I thought. Little did I know that deal at the crossroads meant the farm should the crop not crop.
Down the unpaved road in Timmonsville, the next phenom heard from the same man, strange enough. He said, ‘Son, we need you, just like your mama needs this check. Just think, you can go to college, take your family out of this place. Columbia ain’t but two hours away and I think once you hear the Colosseum roaring your name, you won’t be quite as homesick.’ Both of us found out that I-95 simply split where we took a right from Market Street on a trek to Assembly, again.
I think here we make the sun shine. The ball player sees the high sun, gets the gear, the pumps. I sat in an auditorium where Edgar forcefully excavated the baseball cap I was wearing. My plight was a history lesson, his was the droves of blonde-haired girls wanting an autograph. One was intoxicating, the other drove to intoxication. I cannot believe how many pages are in this damned book.
I learned that the Blues was a state of being informed by years of oppression, subjugation, and extraction. The baller, however, stared at the blank white-board I had written a supporting lesson on. His mind was in California, eating good, and hearing his name called by Stern. Unconcerned with the lesson, simply maintaining a passable grade was enough. I, however, was melting pennies I rubbed them so hard. My meal plan got me a Scooby Doo sandwich from Bates West, his chef-prepared meals came with a session of Call of Duty with the squad.
“It’s 3rd down, Gamecocks trail 21–17 in Knoxville. Handoff up the middle, breaks one, tackled down. Oh no, the Vol defender falls on his knee awkwardly. He’s in serious pain, grabbing the grass, ripping his helmet off. We will be back in a moment, folks, a commercial from our sponsor.” They never came back. I saw my mentee cussing God — why have you forsaken me. I was in shambles as the last hope for our season rested on that stupid tackle doing his goddamn job. How did that safety get loose?! Another season down, the drain. It was time to head to Yesterday’s for dinner and guzzle my sorrows. There were no checks, no suits, just screaming into a void where our respective utilities echoed empty.
Get Sean Rogers’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Did you know that major universities hire cadre to follow the gridiron gladiators around their classes ensuring that they both go to class, and stay? Kiswahili was my language of choice to meet the requirements for my degrees. I had to show mastery of a foreign language like any other student. To be honest, my goal was to learn an African language as that’s where my own research seemed to be heading. The future NFL players also in my courses had a different agenda, it was allegedly the easiest A on campus, especially in the foreign languages. Stats or Arabic made some sense for me but Tanzania and Uganda were active conflict zones. I wrote about Joseph Kony, they were scribbling hawajambo on a sheet of paper torn from the professor’s notebook.
Outside a poorly paid GA scrolls his phone for other part-time jobs since this one barely covers rent. The same kid he’s babysitting just pulled a cool million from his ESPN100 signing a few weeks ago on sub-par SATs. My GA was in the actual Graduate School where I processed the thousands of applications for programs at the Flagship where only so much money could be rerouted from the AD to the physics department. We are worried about Saturdays down South, not quantum physics, and surely not international political economy.
The GA, however, is pretty excited to get a little change and his tuition paid at least. It’s no NIL with Garnet Trust, but it has to suffice. USC doesn’t have a union of any type, not like the University of Florida. The graduate students there collectively organized in the 1970s to prevent full-on forced labor. Like most states in the south, unions have been met with harsh criticism and outright prohibition. Unlike their contemporaries in the Northeast, you know the Local 53 types we laud during a March holiday, you can’t here. These southern states are at-will where an employer can hire/fire for any reason, even those you’d litigate on Constitution Avenue 500 miles away.
The State of Florida is so vehement with its subversion they aren’t overtly killing a union to improve conditions for graduate students at their flagship, they are simply raising the participation threshold to actually organize. SB256 requires 60% of the active graduate assistants must now participate, including paying non-payroll deducted dues, else its charter gets revoked giving power back to the powerful donor-class more concerned with the Sumrall ($7.5M/yr over 6) contract than Shands Children’s Hospital medical student GA ($19.2K over 9-months).
This matters because the more money for the athletic department, the bigger the check the man in the suit can give to the running-back from Apopka. Since UF is a paragon in athletics, too, the revenue they generate will surely come back and prop up the struggling Archaeology Department. Unlikely, it is non-revenue generating and far too difficult for student athletes to pass, unlike the home of Michael Jordan, UNC at Chapel Hill. The Noble Shroud has very deep pockets and can maintain a cloak for a generation. Them getting caught, and subsequently not even punished, was little more than compliance theater. They were embroiled in a multi-decade coverup regarding ‘fake courses’ for their kids to sail through, ensuring no one missed Coach Smith’s last March run or Ol’ Roy’s Shoe-filling campaign. But it isn’t just one school, or apparel brand.
The story of sponsorship has an ironic history in the South. Bootleggers raced across the Carolinas with enough White Lightning to kill a bull. Those dusty, hotrods were meant to out run the law. Fast forward years and Sonoco stickers adorn the rides, and the Darla Moore School of Business no less. Forrest’s mama asked him to try a new ping pong paddle for a $35K check, given by a man in a suit to a war-hero! Just this week the Big 12 agreed to terms with Monster Energy Drink to have the ignoble M sewn directly above the Mountaineers’ of West by God logo, before they torch couches. There was a time when making it meant you got your face on a Wheaties box, olympians and the like. Now, anything and anyone wanting to sell you something has a tent up with palms open, even if you don’t need a tractor from Blanchard CAT.
Who among us hadn’t heard at the local watering hole that we need to get politics out of sports? I don’t like that Kaepernick kneeling during the anthem, or more recently Trump having a chat with the notoriously corrupt FIFA about a certain red card given during the US-hosted, er, North American-hosted World Cup. It even drew attention to the current birthright citizenship debate as the player in question is, well, um, in that category with a funny name. You fans are pitted against one another not because of a tiger-burn or the Apple Cup, but because you are distracted by the noise ESPN and the 24hr news cycle had to show you to fill the hours of the day. The attention economy shapes what you care about, and it wasn’t the filthy mattress you sleep on, but rather the black light that shows the truth about it.
The imaginary voice, though realer than sunshine, we’ll call him Larry, just told me more about Saquon Barkley’s golf rounds with the executive than how the Eagles’ offensive line went dark. He was far more concerned with the ‘black girls beating up Caitlin Clark’ than he was seeing she has fouls up to her elbows in her second full season. ESPN and the 24hr news cycle sold you politics in lieu of sports and you ate it up like sweet potato souffle. So what kind of world do you want to live in, Larry?
We want a world of accountability, where the product on the field represents the hard work of its people. I, as a double Alum, want to see more Ws and trophies in the case, but I refuse to take part in an age-old grift. So what I am going to do is the following:
Stop participating in the endless grift. The transfer portal is not NFL free agency, nor a soap for us to get drip-fed while we wait on the next scandal. The mega outlets show us this because we are addicted to it and cannot stop talking about it. The media will give you what you ask for, and vote for with your wallets, attention, and participation. Unless you stop swiping the card or buzzing around X, they have no reason to alter their playbook — See Deflategate, or any other number of Russini posts.
Set expectations with your donations and spend. The University, and hundreds of others are getting crushed by deficits, costs, lower enrollment, and some are fully shuttering. You are responsible for this, in more ways than one. Remember the Gamecock Club donation you made to get the nosebleeds you sold to the single-mother of two, that went into a black box. You could, however, stipulate that your donation go to the graduate assistant keeping the star wide receiver on the field and in his sociology class. You could ensure that your funding, if you can even donate given the state of the state, be targeted to ensuring people are adequately supported for important work you get benefit from, as a fan, alum, or citizen of SC.
Simplify the fight. Strip it back to the game, and only the game. Ensure the content you consume is about the sports you like and the features you like. The broadcasters and host must accommodate or you simply turn on 107.5 The Game and listen like a real fan. Color commentary is chicken noodle soup for the soul, anyway. If you like cars with fewer decals, or you don’t like a gaudy airbrushed logo on Steve Spurrier Field, withhold your support. In Lysistrata, the women withheld sex to end the Peloponnesian War. How long do you think it went on?
Demand Rivalry. The conference re-alignment saga is exclusively about revenue and you buying the narrative. USC and Texas A&M have zero real history, hell, A&M wasn’t even in the conference a decade ago. No matter how stupid Dawn Staley makes opposing teams look, the Lady Gamecocks do not concern themselves with anyone but LSU and Tennessee. Not during tournament time, not ever. We hate Pickens A&M, we despise bulldogs from Athens, and sadly remember the ones from the Ashley River beating us at home. There is no reason Stanford should be in the Atlantic Coast Conference, or that it even exist, or that Notre Dame gets to have cake, cry, and eat it, too. UCLA and Southern Cal belong together in La La Land arguing over parking spots. The Big East is where McNabb and Vick, and Sapp crushed dreams. You participating in the ever expanding conferences, that once represented localities and shared cultures, now have been diluted to which game is at 12PM on CBS (Ohio State, dumb question). Ever notice how the same schools are chosen for Gameday, several times a year? Sure they go where the winning is happening, but with the budgets, NIL, and realignment, it will live in Baton Rouge for the next decade until Lane takes another job with the Titans, or some shit like that.
This is a story about memory and legacy. It requires accountability about how we consume the fixin’s and dismiss how the brisket got here. We cannot both love and enable the grift, either in sports, politics, or in how we participate in life. The exchange, and turning a blind-eye to truths gives our autonomy and decision making authority to someone else. If you want to see militant football and student-athletes in suits, practice, then you must ensure some level of accountability is maintained. As for the re-alignment and NIL conversation, those will be in the next piece. This is merely a reminder that there is a truth, you have one, and power about how it’s deployed in the things and spaces you love, especially those on the weekend you were blessed with from the factory.
Editor’s note: Between the time this piece was written and published, the University of Kansas announced a jersey patch sponsorship with Ripple, a cryptocurrency firm.
