Setting goals is a tricky business.  Set them too high and you’ll disappoint yourself and those that bought into the false hope.  Set them too low and achieving them isn’t really a success nor a motivator.   Setting goals for sport teams is equally tricky for the exact same reasons.  Fan support and donor support hang in the balance.

Let’s use a Gamecock as a Guinea pig for an example.  What is a realistic yearly goal for Head Coach Will Muschamp and his South Carolina football team?

SC competes in the SEC East.  They play Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt each year in the east.  They have Texas A&M from the west as their designated rivalry yearly game and rotate among Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi St,, Ole Miss, and Arkansas as their other west opponent.  You have four SEC games at home, and four on the road each year.   They select/control who their four out of conference opponents are and where they play those games.   One choice that they always make is Clemson.  The instate rivalry “Palmetto Bowl” is 115 games old and counting.

It should be noted that this year’s schedule rotated in the west to a tussle with Alabama.  All of the above makes one wince.  Survive that gauntlet and the reward is the SEC Championship Game against the best from the west and a to be determined bowl game.  SC joined the SEC in 1970.  A championship still escapes them.

Ready to set the goal to keep everyone moving in the same direction to achieve it?  Good luck.  Good luck unless some realism, if not publicly stated, is at least privately understood.

After being impatient in latter part of the 20th Century,  SC has been patient in the 21st.  Lou Holtz in 2000 gave way to Steve Spurrier in 2005, who retired in 2015.  Enter volatile Will Muschamp.  Four years later SC competes hard on the field.  Their upset of Georgia in Athens two weeks ago proves that.  The report card for Holtz was a 45% winning percentage turning around a downtrodden program in four years, 63% under the ole ball coach, and 55% for Muschamp’s tenure.

Is Oklahoma St. or Texas Tech the SC of the BIG 12?  Is Michigan St. or Minnesota the SC of the BIG 10.  Is Washington St. or California the SC of the PAC 12?  It seems so.  So do you accept the bar and try to shimmy over it more than not?  Or do you raise the bar and attempt to do what you haven’t done in a long, long time or even forever?

How do you move up to that higher bar?  Money, cheat, culture, system?

Okie St. chose the money route thanks to T. Boone Pickens.  Mike Gundy’s team has had a few moments, but no breakthrough yet.  Tillman Fertitta is pouring money into Houston to try the same from a lower bar.

Ole Miss chose the dishonest route.  Hugh Freeze’s college coaching career is on ice because of it, and Ole Miss is fighting to stay out of the cellar in the SEC West.

Mike Leach brought his fun and gun system and mentality to Wash St.  It’s been fun, but it too hasn’t broken through.

Dabo Swinney changed the culture and expectations at Clemson though they had a more storied past to recapture the magic v. establish it.

We think that a game Muschamp is going the culture route hoping recruiting and money will follow.  His 3-4 record season to date matches his recruiting rankings relative to his competition thus far.  A season ending date with Clemson still looms.  Jeez.

There’s much satisfaction and financial reward for whomever can sustainably break through to challenge the big boys.

It’s an admirable goal.  Is it realistic?