STEVE SPURRIER

Age:  63

School:  South Carolina

Alma Mater:  Florida, 1966

Conference:  SEC

Salary:  $1,773,000

Official Bio:   www.gamecocksonline.com

Years Coaching:  18

Career Record:  163 - 56 - 2   .738

Years at School:  3

Record at South Carolina:  21 - 16   .558

2007 Record:  6 - 6  .500

2007 Cost per Win:  $295,500

Attorney/Agent:   Jimmy Sexton

Contract:     

December 2008 Buyout:  $2,000,000

Coaches Hot Seat Analysis

Okay, we have to admit this up front.  We think a lot of Steve Spurrier here at Coaches Hot Seat, and it pains us to see the situation he has gotten himself into at South Carolina.  The reasons we think so much of Spurrier are very easy for everyone to see and understand.  Spurrier was a rip-roaring, hellava, Heisman Trophy winning a football player at the University of Florida before many of us were out of diapers, and after 10 years in the NFL (9 years with the SF 49ers), Steve became a rip-roaring, jive talking, "If the clock is still ticking we are going to try and score," head football coach.  Yes, we remember Spurrier coaching the Tampa Bay Bandits in the USFL before heading off to Duke!  Watching Spurrier coach the Florida Gators in the 1990s was like watching Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods play golf, Nolan Ryan pitch a baseball game, Lance Armstrong whip up on those European weenies in the Tour de France, or Troy Aikman play quarterback for the Cowboys.  It was fun to watch Spurrier coach the Gators, and to a man all of us thought that the NFL experiment with the Redskins was going to fail, and that was before he coached a game in the NFL.  It is not that Spurrier cannot coach in the NFL, but that the professional players were not going to listen to and react well to Spurrier's particular style of coaching.  Steve Spurrier is a very demanding football coach, but not in the way that Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes were demanding.  Spurrier expects his entire team and entire coaching staff to show up ready to do their particular jobs, but there is one man on the field that Spurrier expects even more from, the quarterback.  Give Steve Spurrier a QB that will listen to and follow his orders explicitly, and Spurrier will pile up the wins, but if the QB is not coachable, his team might as well turn out the lights.  Danny Wuerffel was the quintessential Steve Spurrier QB, because not only would he listen and do as he was told, he could take the verbal beating when mistakes were made on the football field.  Spurrier and Wuerffel won big at Florida, but Spurrier won with several other QBs in Gainesville, and of course he had loads of talent on the defensive side of the ball as well.  There is a lot less talent at South Carolina, but at the core, Spurrier's problem in Columbia is that he does not have a quarterback that can both listen to, and execute the Steve Spurrier offense.  Spurrier has passed off the offensive play-calling duties to his son, Steve Spurrier Jr., for the 2008 season, but that doesn't change the fact that they still need a QB to execute those plays. 

Can Spurrier win at South Carolina?  Yes, Spurrier can win at South Carolina, but he needs to find a QB, and quick.  This is very simple, and like most things in sports it gets back to the amount of points that are put up on the scoreboard.  At Florida, Spurrier's teams averaged scoring 37.11 points per game, and gave up on defense 18 points per game.  At South Carolina, Spurrier's teams are averaging scoring 25.5 points per game, and the defense is giving up 21.7 points per game.  It doesn't take a genius to see why Spurrier won so many games at Florida, and has struggled so at South Carolina, and the way out of this mess is strikingly simple.  Spurrier and the Gamecocks simple needs to score more points, averaging at least 28 to 30 points per game, and Ellis Johnson (the new USC defensive coordinator) needs to keep the opposing teams below 25 points per game.  There is little chance with the defensive talent at South Carolina that they will ever be able to keep teams below 20 points per game, but there is the opportunity to keep the opposing teams in the 20 to 25 point range.  If the defense can do that, then Spurrier only needs to get his offense going a little more, but that brings us back around to the problems at the QB position at USC.  Looking at the South Carolina QB depth chart, we see Chris Smelley, Tommy Beecher, and the often in trouble Stephen Garcia, but we don't see someone that can step into and fill the most important role on any Steve Spurrier coached team, and that means trouble ahead for USC in the 2008 season.  What really surprises us here at Coaches Hot Seat is that Spurrier doesn't have a couple of top QBs on his team after 3 signing classes, and in fact is going to run out QBs onto the field this fall that several people here at Coaches Hot Seat could beat out for the starting job.  Why a great QB hasn't signed with USC since Spurrier arrived (don't tell us that Garcia is a great QB, because we would have kicked Garcia off a team coached by Coaches Hot Seat long ago.  "You keyed someone's car son?  Your gone.") is a mystery to us, and that lack of a great QB really imperils the South Carolina football program going forward.

Coaches Hot Seat Bottom Line

We predict that Steve Spurrier and South Carolina will have a 6-6 record in 2008.   Steve Spurrier is a great football coach, but the lack of a quality QB and a very tough schedule in the SEC will hold the Gamecocks back in '08.  South Carolina opens with a very tough game against ACC opponent NC State at home, but with O'Brien still rebuilding the Wolfpack, we see a win here for USC.  Even though Vandy is getting better, we are betting that Spurrier finds a way to beat the 'Dores on the road to open up 2-0.  The winning streak ends when Mark Richt brings the Georgia Bulldogs to Columbia, because the Dogs are loaded and they have big plans for 2008.  Next up are Wofford and UAB, so after 5 games the Gamecocks are a respectful 4-1.  The next week finds the key game on the schedule, as Spurrier takes USC to Oxford, Mississippi to play Houston Nutt's new team, the Ole Miss Rebels.  This should be a great SEC game, with two very evenly matched teams, but we have the sneaking suspicion that Nutt will have the Rebels playing just a little better than they did under Orgeron, and Nutt will get a win in this game.  After 6 games, the 'Cocks are 4-2.  Next up is a trip to horse country to play the Kentucky Wildcats, and although we think this will be another close one, Spurrier and USC will sneak out with a win.  5-2 after seven games.  After playing only 1 real heavyweight in the first 7 weeks (Georgia), Spurrier and South Carolina now face a murders' row of teams that begins with the defending National Champions, LSU in Columbia.  After LSU, it is Tennessee, Arkansas, and then at Florida and at Clemson to finish the season.  Wow!  Southern Cal would struggle with that schedule, but we see Spurrier having a lot of trouble with his QBs by this time in the season, and we see only 1 win out of the last 5 games, a close win over Tennessee at home.  What does all of that add up to?  A very frustrated Steve Spurrier and a 6-6 record for the 2008 season.

2008 Coaches Hot Seat Prediction:        6-6

Will Steve Spurrier be back for the 2009 season?       YES*

*Steve Spurrier will be back at South Carolina in 2009, if he wants to come back, and we do not dismiss the possibility that Spurrier will walk away into retirement after the '08 season.  Listening to Coach Spurrier in press conferences, it sounds like he would like to coach for 3 or 4 more years, but a guy like Spurrier that is so used to winning, is going to be real frustrated at a place like USC.  The real sad thing from our point of view, is that if Spurrier had been a little more patient at the end of the 2004 season and not jumped at the South Carolina job, he might have had the opportunity to take