Team preview: South Carolina
Steve Spurrier has won 163 games and a national championship in 18 years as a head coach, proof aplenty that there's a method to his particular brand of madness. Now Spurrier -- Head Ball Coach also is acceptable on first reference -- intends to give up his play-calling duties and become the Total Ball Coach.
Spurrier announced this spring that his son, 11-year assistant Steve Spurrier, Jr., would assume control of the offensive maneuvering. Sort of.
"I haven't given up completely,"
said Spurrier, who revolutionized college football in the 1990s as a de facto sideline extension of his quarterbacks. "Steve Jr. has been with me 11 years and all this that and the other. He's able to do it. But it does free you up during the week."
A pair of events -- one a staff meeting, the other a Gamecock season opener -- began to convince Spurrier he could better realize his quest to end South Carolina's 40-year conference title drought, which has lasted since the 1969 team won the Atlantic Coast Conference with a 6-0 record.
