Steve Spurrier speaks about the state of the program
Two weeks into his new job as South Carolina's football coach, Steve Spurrier admits he had doubts. He wondered, if only for a minute, if he could revive what essentially was a moribund program. Maybe Lee Corso was right, Spurrier thought. Maybe it could not be done at USC.
Eight prospects were brought to Columbia in December of 2004, only one of whom had committed to play for Spurrier and his Gamecocks. One other was mildly interested in USC. The other six, Spurrier surmised, wanted a free recruiting trip.
"I said, 'My God, what have I got into here?' " Spurrier says. "What have I gotten into? Are we going to be able to sign anybody this year?"
Two years later, Spurrier's doubts have been erased by back-to-back winning seasons, a victory over rival Clemson, a Liberty Bowl decision over Houston, and a consensus top-five recruiting class.
"We're not there yet, but we're trying to piece it together, and that's the fun part," Spurrier says. "That's the fun part, trying to meld it."
That melding process has been more than two years in the works. After two seasons of meeting "realistic" goals, Spurrier believes his program now is ready to make a giant step forward. He says USC can challenge for the Southeastern Conference East Division championship beginning with the 2007 season.
Getting to this point has meant Spurrier addressing concerns in recruiting, facilities and what he likes to call "attitude." In each area, Spurrier believes the program is making progress and is close to where he wants it to be, or at least closer than when he arrived at USC.
After the initial shock, Spurrier has found USC to be an easy sell in recruiting. He quickly abandoned the quick-fix route of bringing in an abundance of junior-college players, allowing for a couple in each recruiting class to fill holes. Ultimately, Spurrier says USC will have arrived as a legitimate program when it can put mostly third- and fourth-year players on the field.
His sales pitch to most recruits is somewhat of a history lesson. When they sit in his Williams-Brice Stadium office, Spurrier points to a sign he had placed on an upper-deck facade to recognize USC's 1969 Atlantic Coast Conference champions.
"I talk to them about winning their first SEC championship," Spurrier says. "You go to Tennessee, Florida or Georgia, you're just doing what some guy before you has done, a lot of guys before you have done."
Spurrier then invokes the name of Tommy Suggs. Suggs, the color commentator on USC's radio broadcasts, forever will be known as the quarterback on USC's only championship team.
"You come here," Spurrier tells recruits, "you do it for the first time, and that team will be remembered forever in Carolina history."
Shortly after his hire, when Spurrier rode a bicycle around Williams-Brice Stadium on his 60th birthday, he said a key to getting recruits to USC was to land the first big one. After that, others would fall in line and USC would be "a cool place to be."
That first one came this past recruiting season when quarterback Stephen Garcia of Tampa, Fla., committed to USC. Two others who fell into the same category were defensive ends Cliff Matthews of Cheraw and Travian Robertson from Laurinburg, N.C.
Before he knew it, Spurrier had one of the nation's top recruiting classes.
"For us to have the recruiting class we had last year just gives us all hope and excitement and anticipation that we realistically have a chance here," Spurrier says.
To string together outstanding recruiting classes, Spurrier now realizes USC needs serious upgrades in facilities. He also realizes that getting a better training table for the football team and improved athletic trainers' facilities and an academic center for athletics is no easy task, certainly not as easy as when he coached at Florida.
What Spurrier wanted in his 12-season run at Florida, he usually got. Right away. With the USC athletics department operating under a $60 million debt ceiling set by the South Carolina Legislature, financing for any project often is difficult. Most of that debt is taken by the construction of the Colonial Center and for USC's proposed baseball stadium.
USC's remaining avenue to financial stability is fund-raising, and Spurrier has been the first to jump in and help the cause. Twice, at the request of athletics director Eric Hyman, Spurrier has hosted fund-raising events at his home.
"Anytime I've asked him, he has been congenial and accepting," says Hyman, who believes Spurrier's reach in the state of South Carolina has gone far beyond fund-raising.
"In any program, you've got to create hope," Hyman says, "and I think Steve's program has created a huge amount of hope."
Spurrier has created that hope by working on what the previous coach called a necessary "cultural change" in the USC football program. Spurrier says he is not smart enough to understand the meaning of cultural change. Do not be fooled. He simply prefers to use a different word: attitude.
"The attitude and the way we approach things has to change, and it has to change slowly," Spurrier says. "It doesn't happen because they hired me. It happens once you do it on the field, you beat good teams and you compete every week.
"We're still not there. We still don't know how to compete every play (of) the entire game. But we're gaining on it. It is a habit, and it is passed down player to player, game to game and so forth. We're all creatures of habit. You have to get in a habit of doing that every game, every year."
The realization that years and years of sub-par effort had become acceptable at USC hit Spurrier right out of the gate in his first game on the Gamecocks' sideline. USC had difficulty shaking a pesky Central Florida team that played hard to the final snap, according to Spurrier. USC won, 24-15, but Spurrier was not happy.
And even though USC sprung upsets on Florida and Tennessee during the 2005 season, what sticks with Spurrier most is the stunning loss to Missouri in the Independence Bowl. After Missouri rallied from a 28-7 deficit to win, Spurrier assured his team in the locker room that no USC team would ever again lose a game in that manner. He was adamant that an attitude change was needed at USC.
Spurrier says he began teaching about attitude during his first head coaching assignment, at Duke from 1987-89. Still, today Spurrier is asked how he managed to win at Duke, where his teams were 20-13-1.
"Well, the first thing we told our Duke players is that they're just as good as the Clemson guys, or Virginia, or Georgia Tech," Spurrier says. "Now, probably they weren't. But if they think they are, then we have a chance. If you think you’re inferior to the other guy, your chances are not very good.
"At some point, and I'm hoping now, in our third year, we come to the big games saying, 'We're just as good as those guys and all we've got to do is play our assignments, play as hard as we can, and we've got a great chance of being the winner.
“ ‘Expect good things to happen, because we're just as good as those guys. We've worked just as hard or harder than anybody. Now it's our time to win a championship. That's what we're trying to do.' "
That said, Spurrier sometimes has to temper the enthusiasm of his players and USC fans. More often than not when Spurrier sees USC fans, he receives a pat on the back and is lauded for his team's success during the 2006 season.
"Wait a minute, now," Spurrier tells every fan. "We were 3-5 in the SEC. Did you know that?"
The fan usually is startled, according to Spurrier.
"We didn't have a great year," Spurrier continues. "But we had a good ending, obviously, beating Clemson and winning a bowl game. So, it was a good year. It was a good year, but it wasn't a great year."
That good year represented progress for Spurrier and his program. It means USC could compete with any team in the SEC. It also means Spurrier is prepared to adjust the goals for the program and begin shooting for SEC championships.
More than anything, it means USC's program has moved closer to being where Spurrier wants it to be.
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