South Carolina Athletics: Now Above .500

South Carolina athletics aims for the stars, and usually lands in a fiery heap somewhere 500 feet past the end of the runway. It's been hard for them since joining the SEC in all departments, especially in football, where they've become notorious for losing games in painful fashion (like this or this, if you want to see the pain in all its detail, you sadist.)

It's made worse because Gamecock fans, beaten and abused by fate though they might be, remain spectacularly enthusiastic no matter how much agony salad their team piles on their plate. Lose as many times as you like: their fans keep lining up for a willing ride on the pain train, a perfect example of the deep irrationality of fandom. Humanitarian relief, psychiatric treatment, and awards: surely, they deserve some blend of all three.

But do they really need this?

As Doug from Hey Jenny Slater points out, this really is like something straight from The Onion. Fearful that this might be a cunning Photoshop job, I called The State's sports desk to verify that I wasn't being hoodwinked. Nope -- it's real, and further proof that you don't have to make anything up to create satire. Sometimes it's just a matter of cutting and pasting reality into the right order.

(H/T: Paul Westerdawg.)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.