Georgia Tech Football: Snarky Preview – South Carolina State

(Author’s note: a few years ago it fell to me to organize football watch parties for the Los Angeles alumni group, and to amuse myself I started writing up snarky previews of each week’s game and opponent in the Facebook invites that went out. Here’s the second 2023 edition.)

Join us on Saturday as Tech looks to bounce back from a season-opening loss against this year’s FCS opponent, South Carolina State.

SCSU lost to Charlotte this past weekend by multiple scores. That’s not meant to shame them, though—they were understandably outmatched against an FBS opponent. But you know who else lost by multiple scores and has no excuse? That’s right: both of the power-conference FBS programs in their state.

South Carolina opened their season by faceplanting against North Carolina in a 31-17 loss. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they made Luke Maye’s brother (let’s be real, they’ll always love Luke more in Chapel Hill no matter how well Drake does) look like a demigod, uNC coach Mack Brown used his well-established vampire powers to steal a few years of life from poor, unsuspecting Shane Beamer. The ‘Cocks got knocked down in their season opener, and it could take them a little while to get back up.

And then there’s Clemson. Oh, little ol’ Clemson did a little ol’ Clemsoning.

Little ol’ Dabo Swinney probably has enough spiritual energy to ward off a vampire. He probably also carries around a certain implement that is used for that purpose in prominent literature. But either way, what he didn’t have was enough coaching acumen to overcome that most overwhelming of forces: Duke football. Rumor is the state of New Jersey will be declaring a holiday in honor of their collective favorite team’s victory, but in the meantime… well, take heart, Tiger fans: at least y’all are good at proving that you can spell your school’s name.

Also on the bright side, Clemson, you may not even be the Tigers that had the funniest loss in Week 1. There’s a simple joy in watching a Brian Kelly team lose in disastrous fashion, and we all got to experience it in LSU’s 45-24 loss to Florida State. The only question is whether this LSU loss is funnier than when Kelly forced his QB to pass 40 times in a literal hurricane in a loss to NC State; the tiebreaker may go to Sunday’s loss simply because it caused LSU’s TigerDroppings forum to collapse, presumably from a frillion posts pleading for their $95 million coach to be fired.

Anyway. South Carolina State enters this game 0-2 and still seeking their first win of the season. While the Jackets were far from perfect in the opener, they’ll still be expected to take care of business on Saturday. If things go according to plan, it’ll make for a refreshing change of pace from last week. If they don’t… well, at least it’ll be interesting, right? Yeah that’s the word for it.