This. Anyone who says your fans are still blindly supporting the program is living in 1999.
In fairness, I don't believe most fan bases will support a losing program anymore by attending the games. Why go spend a ton of money to watch your team lose when you can sit in front of the TV and do it much easier and cheaper? I believe the days of any fan base blindly supporting a losing team are in the past. There will always be the diehards that do but the casual fans won't. That applies to UofSC and every other fan base.
I think you hit one nail on the head -- the cost of being a supporter has gone up and up and up, across college football.
I know some diehards at USC and some other schools who got priced out of supporting the program the way they used to. Just got to the point they reached a ceiling on what they could spend. They're still as loyal as ever in terms of rooting for their teams and following them, they just now do it from home. I think that's one issue CFB across the board will have to deal with sooner rather than later.
That said, most folks I know with no allegiance to USC view the Gamecocks as an average to above average program, but I know some Georgia fans who tell me the Gamecocks scare them as much as anybody in the conference because you never know which Carolina team will show up --