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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > September > 11
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sympathy for the Evil Genius
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Steve Spurrier once sent me a fan letter. (Actually, it was a postcard.) I’d written some goofy thing back in the early ’90s about how, with half the SEC being investigated or on probation, the day was coming when Vanderbilt would win the conference by default.
And Spurrier, being a discerning reader, found this hilarious. And he dropped me a note to say as much.
I mention this because Spurrier - who would subsequently send missives not nearly so complimentary, one of which wound up getting mentioned in The New Yorker - has lost to Vandy two years running. (He’d been 14-0 previously.) Part of me thinks it’s amusing, the guy who was so tickled by the notion of the Commodores winning being thwarted by them now. A bigger part of me finds it sad.
See, I’ve developed a weird case of sympathy for the Evil Genius.
He was more fun when he was winning big and rubbing it in. Now he’s just another coach humbled by the cold reality of working at South Carolina, where nothing big ever happens.
This is his fourth season in Columbia, and he’s 22-17. Last year was supposed to be the breakthrough, and the Gamecocks didn’t even grace a bowl. And even when Spurrier has won at Carolina, it hasn’t been the sling-it-around-and-score-every-possession sort of winning he did at Florida. His first Gamecock bunch finished 100th in the nation in total offense; last year’s team was 77th. Through two games this season, Carolina is 76th.
It’s clear Spurrier will have to be satisfied with occasional triumphs, such as last season’s 16-12 upset in Athens, and not the carload of championships he collected in Gainesville. He won’t beat Georgia, the team he used to own, this Saturday - I don’t think Carolina can stay within two touchdowns - and I’m not sure he will again. He is, lest we forget, 63.
He walked away from the Redskins after two seasons, and I wonder how long he’ll stick it out in Columbia. Even Ray Goff, Spurrier’s addled foil, never lost two straight to Vandy.
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