FanHouse South Carolina Football

South Carolina head coach Spurrier launched a pay-for-subscription website last year, but it didn't go far. The website, which charged $99.95 per year, featured 'inside information' directly from the OBC himself but slipped under the waves when site operator Champion Technologies went out of business in February.

Undeterred, the OBC is going to try again. This time the price will be more accommodating to the average fan -- $49.95 per year or $4.95 per month -- and will feature more inside looks at Gamecock football.

The site will feature a staple of last year's site: the 'Ask HBC' section, where fans type their questions and get them answered by Spurrier. The video playbook also returns as Spurrier and his assistants break down key plays from the most-recent game to give fans an inside look.

Hey, that's really cool. Watching the master himself break down football plays? I'd be all over that. And...

Planned features include having Spurrier miked up while playing a round of golf plus construction updates on the expansion of the team's training room at Williams-Brice Stadium. Scott said a member of the training staff will talk about what the improvements will mean for USC's athletes.

Golf's great. So are construction updates... but shouldn't that stuff run on Lincoln Financial? Anyway, check it out for yourself at SpurrierHBC.com. And tell 'em FanHouse sent you.

If you think you know every dirty creative trick schools use to recruit athletes, you may be right. But I'm willing to guess that you don't. I think I learned at an early age about the sneaky ways of recruiting from reading "That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It", by Alex Hawkins.

When Hawkins, then a South Charleston high school senior, was being sought after by football and basketball college coaches, he chose football because it paid more money. "I was offered a farm to sign with the University of Kentucky but I was offered $1,500 a semester, a complete men's wardrobe and a new automobile to play football for coach Rex Enright at South Carolina.

Depending on how you look at it, those days are sadly over. Too bad I couldn't find the bit about the men West Virginia paid to make sure no other coaches talked to Hawkins. Because the South Carolina coaches had to sneak in the back door to make that offer. Undoubtedly, WVU's men were looking for new jobs that fall.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Recruiting always has been and always will be about getting access to the player, and what you can sell them in that time. Despite the NCAA's best efforts to control the contact coaches have with recruits, it seems there's always a loophole.

So when Oregon coaches identified their top 20 prospects for the class of 2005, Gilmore and his staff designed custom comic books starring each recruit as the hero who leads the Ducks to a national title. Because NCAA rules at the time only allowed programs to send letter-sized, black-and-white pages to recruits, Gilmore sent each prospect one page a week. After a few months, the recruit had the full comic book.

The practice of sending a recruit a comic book about themselves was nixed when the NCAA passed a rule that only material that was created by a coach could be sent to recruits. I would not be at all surprised to learn that Oregon offered a spot on the coaching staff to Stan Lee.

Get it? GET IT?

A major blow, figuratively and literally, for Spurrier and Co:

South Carolina backup defensive tackle Kenrick Ellis has been dismissed from the team for violating university policy, Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier said Tuesday following the first day of the SEC spring meetings.

Spurrier would not divulge the reason for Ellis' dismissal, although a source said Ellis had failed multiple drug tests.

"Kenrick's gone," Spurrier said. "He's finished."

Ellis was already suspended for the first three games of the 2008 season for the good old "undisclosed violation of team rules against getting blunted like whoah"; he must have continued the blunting-like-whoah party.

Ellis was a four-star recruit back in the day and played in all of South Carolina's games last year, starting one, as a redshirt freshman. Losing him is not devastating, but it ain't good either.

(Via The Wizard of Odds.)

Usually spring is the season of unbridled (and in many cases, unrealistic) optimism for college football fans. Not so in Columbia, South Carolina.

An unspectacular recruiting season combined with disarray at the quarterback position (redshirt frosh Stephen Garcia was cited for underage drinking last month, his fourth offense in his short tenure at South Carolina) set the stage for the Gamecocks' spring scrimmage. After Spurrier's last spring game put fans to sleep (it was a low-scoring, 14-7 affair) the Ol' Ball Coach enacted new rules for '08: no pass rushing, no blitzing, and the defense was forced to play one of three base coverages.

Sounds like a recipe for an offensive extravaganza, right? Nope: QBs Chris Smelley and Tommy Beecher combined for 8 interceptions versus the declawed 'Cock defense.

Add to this the fact that Spurrier has designated his son, Steve Spurrier Jr., as the new playcaller. And, yes, Junior was calling the plays. For both offenses.

Does Spurrier have one foot out the door already at South Carolina? If Spurrier fails to produce a competitive team in this, his fourth year in Columbia, you've just gotta wonder. The OBC is grooming his son for the head coaching job, hasn't been lighting it up on the recruiting trail, and has already been in public scrapes with the university over admissions issues. Gamecock fans are nervous about what ROI might come from their pricey head coach in his remaining time in the Palmetto State, and rightfully so.

Getting old is sad. Just ask fans of Florida State or Penn State or Queen Elizabeth. It's even sadder when the old monarch starts installing his nitwit son in places of importance and the nitwit son calls nothing but hopeful downfield jump balls or starts a war in the Falklands or something. Once the old guy starts the nepotism train, it's all over.

South Carolina fans, this is your cue to panic:

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said he will turn some of the play calling duties over to Steve Spurrier, Jr., but that he will still be the offensive coordinator.

Say it ain't so, Steve! What's next, road rage? Coke-bottle glasses? An unquenchable thirst for the brains of the living?

It's all downhill from here, except for that one year when you're inexplicably good and get to play an ACC team in the Orange Bowl. Which, if you're South Carolina, probably sounds pretty good.

The latest news out of South Carolina is that quarterback Stephen Garcia is once again in trouble with The Man, this time for... get out your College Stupidity 8-Balls, readers... Underage Drinking! (hint: it's always underage drinking). As the AP reports, Garcia was one of three football players arrested for underage drinking near a campus dormitory ("Yes, the dorms! They'll never look for alcohol here!")

Worse, Garcia's older brother Jerry* was cited for providing beer for a minor, because if there's one thing holding society back, it's 20-year-olds with beer. Hard liquor we can totally understand, mind you; there's nothing worse than some idiot sophomore reeking of Curve for Men and Captain Morgan as he apologizes for knocking your drink over. But giving beer to underage college students should be fine. They just get happy and play video games. And vomit.

This is Garcia's third run-in with the law; he was arrested once for drunkenness about a year ago, then a month later was charged with keying a professor's car. Garcia, as you can probably imagine, was indefinitely suspended by The Ol' Ball-Coach; it lasted about a month. Spurrier is expected to announce the quarterback's fate with the team soon; it's hard to imagine he'll get dismissed for a victimless crime of impatience, but it's always a fool's endeavor to pretend to know what goes on in TOBC's mind. Sort of like Jesus, but with a visor.

We officially endorse a punishment of two weeks' suspension, heavy amounts of stairs in the morning, and a hand-written apology to Garcia's brother for ratting him out on giving the players beer. The answer is always, always the following: "We found it over there." Then you point somewhere. Must we teach you everything?

*not his brother's real first name

Few things gray the hairs of a five-day-a-week coach (Steve Spurrier's gotta hit the links, natch) like players getting into moped-related accidents.

[South Carolina] Backup tight end Nick Prochak was hospitalized with a broken leg after being struck by a car Jan. 18 on Blossom Street; reserve fullback Clark Gaston avoided serious injury when he collided with a car backing out of a driveway on South Marion Street on Wednesday afternoon.

Neither player was wearing a helmet, which are required for drivers under 21 in South Carolina.

Those tribulations set in motion a team meeting where said coach wagged his finger incessantly or something. The star quarterback-in-waiting got the message, maybe.

Freshman quarterback Stephen Garcia, one of about 30 players with scooters, said Spurrier addressed the issue during a team meeting.

"He just said, 'Be careful and wear a helmet,' " Garcia said.

Also: beat Clemson.
Sorry, No Photos

The whole football coaching thing is working out pretty well for Steve Spurrier, but if he ever needs a career change, the OBC may want to look into being a high school counselor or motivational speaker. The recent hiring of David Cutcliffe at Duke was tangentially tied to Spurrier, who supposedly advised Duke on their coaching hire when he met with officials there a few weeks ago. Spurrier also offered some words of encouragement to Coach Cut: "If anyone can [turn Duke's program around], you can." Hey, you can't spell "Chicken Soup for the Revitalized Coordinator's Soul" without S-P-U-R-R-I-E-R.

When he's not getting people new jobs, the OBC is getting them more money. Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster got a nice raise after being offered the same post at South Carolina, and Sylvester Croom is looking for more cash to spread around his coaching staff at Mississippi State now that Ellis Johnson is said to be the leading candidate for the post. Spurrier is reportedly going to give his new defensive coordinator much more than the $195,000 Tyrone Nix made doing the job last year. Nix himself got about a $100,000 raise for leaving Spurrier's staff and joining Houston Nutt at Ole Miss. For the record, Gamecock fans weren't too upset about Nix's departure, more evidence of how Spurrier's keeping everybody happy these days.

Here's why athletic directors are frowning this morning...

Jimmy John's would like to thank these two young men for the kind of advertising money just can't buy: Ah, early, hazy morning. To a college student in the throes of consumption, the 2 a.m. world is devoid of limits; think zombo.com realized. The world, once cruel and complex, is transformed into a simple melange of urinals, instruments of passion, food, and weapons. Often, even those definitions blur; who among us hasn't spent drunken minutes engaged in the all-important "do I pee on, make out with, eat, or wield this" debate with ourselves? Unfortunately, it looks as if a Florida football player and his former teammate have chosen... poorly.

In what definitely looks like the runaway arrest of the year, Florida DE Jermaine Cunningham and former LB Jon Demps were arrested while fleeing a Gainesville Jimmy John's. The crime? First-degree battery with a sandwich. Okay, the name of the crime is just "first-degree battery," but it was perpetrated with empty cups and a sandwich, and the entire issue was whether one of the young men would pay a dollar for a bag of chips. If that were any more incredible, they'd have to find room on Mount Rushmore for it.

Best yet, in the surest sign yet that greatness begets greatness, we have this sublime line from the Tampa Tribune's Andy Staples:

The report did not specify exactly what kind of sandwich struck the victim.

Andy Staples, answering questions that the rest of us are too afraid to ask. A Pulitzer awaits.

When you go into the postseason 6-6 and are one of 10 (!) bowl-eligible SEC teams, you know you're far from a lock to make a bowl game.

The PetroSun Independence Bowl strongly considered the Gamecocks, but ultimately chose the 6-6 Crimson Tide of Alabama instead, citing the university's geographical proximity to Indepence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Tide will face Big 12 representative Colorado in that game.

For the Gamecocks, it's over. What a weird ride; Starting the season 6-1 and at their apex, holding a Top 10 ranking; then finishing with a 5-game slide, going 3-5 in the SEC and missing a bowl game altogether. Head coach Steve Spurrier's stated goal of winning the SEC in the preseason probably shouldn't have been on the board in 2007.

From GamecockCentral.com:

"We're a little disappointed we didn't get to a bowl game, but we understand we have no one to blame but ourselves," Spurrier said. "We had five games to win No. 7 and we didn't get it done. We had our chances. The guys played pretty well much of the time, and we coached fairly well a lot of the time. But we didn't play well or coach well a lot of times too."

Agreed, Steve. Agreed.

Say goodbye to seniors Blake Mitchell, Cory Boyd and Jasper Brinkley. Could Defensive Coordinator Tyrone Nix be far behind?