Spurrier’s magic has disappeared in Columbia

Columbia, S.C. — They are used to waiting here.

The last conference title came in 1969. That first Top 10 finish is still pending. BSC Bowl? Not exactly.

So four years into the wait for Steve Spurrier and the Cock ‘n Fire and here is where South Carolina’s football program stands:

Spurrier is 22-17 overall, 11-14 against the SEC and 5-9 against ranked opponents. The Gamecocks have lost six of their last seven dating back to 2007, a streak Spurrier has not seen since his first year at Duke 21 years ago.

An offense that ranked just No. 8 in the conference last year is currently 10th after USC’s 1-1 start. He is 1-2 against hated Clemson. And somehow, he is now 2-2 against compliant Vanderbilt after a stunning seven-point upset last week. That made for two straight losses to Vandy, which Spurrier teams had beaten 14 straight times.

“I certainly did not anticipate that,” Spurrier said this week. “But it certainly has happened.”

Georgia this weekend visits a town uneasy about how this wait has progressed. USC beat Georgia early last season and then slowly climbed as high as No. 6 in the AP poll by late October. Yet since then, they have won only one game. Public criticism is up. Some players don’t even turn on the radio anymore.

“I try not to because I know we’re going to get a lot of crap from other people just saying we’re not a good team,” center Garrett Anderson said.

USC is a touchdown underdog Saturday, a bellwether game for a schedule with LSU, Tennessee and Florida still to come. The Head Ball Coach seemed just a little older this week. Four years in, it is beyond the mere suggestion in these parts that the game has moved on without him.

“People have said that before but two years ago, we were third in the SEC in total offense,” Spurrier said. “We think we know what we’re doing. I still believe I’m a good coach but we’ve got to coach this team a little better.

“Hopefully, we’ll find a way to do that.”

South Carolina has a history for consuming its coaches. Lou Holtz had an 0-11 team here. Rex Enright, who won more USC games than anyone, retired with a 64-69-7 record. Paul Dietzel won a national championship at LSU, but could only manage an ACC title in Columbia. That feat, 39 years in the rear-view mirror, remains the most-recent milestone.

Spurrier’s fast start — second in the SEC East and conference coach-of-the-year in 2005 — signaled Spurrier had a different idea. But since then, he is only three games over .500, hasn’t finished better than fourth in the SEC East and still hasn’t even found the right quarterback so essential to his system.

“It takes more than two or three years to get a program going in the right direction in this league,” Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said. “He’s a heck of a football coach. He set a high standard at Florida and it’s going to be hard to meet that at South Carolina. It’s just a different situation.”

By his first four years at Florida, Spurrier had already won the SEC twice. Ask what ails the program now and answers come from 360 degrees.

“It’s just a lot of different problems, nothing specific,” said tight end Jared Cook, who came here from North Gwinnett High School. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Offensively, the line is the least consistent component of the entire team. While redshirt freshman Stephen Garcia, who has been suspended twice for 2007 alcohol-related incidents, may be an eventual answer at quarterback — Spurrier said this week he still isn’t game-ready — he will keep rotating Chris Smelly and Tommy Beecher until one proves himself.

Together, Smelly and Beecher have already thrown six interceptions. The rest of the league has just 11.

“I still believe we’re a better team that we were last year, although offensively we certainly have not shown that,” Spurrier said.

The defense, under new coordinator Ellis Johnson, clamped down N.C. State 34-0 in the opener, just the second USC shutout in eight years. But last Thursday, Vanderbilt scored 21 unanswered points in just over 15 minutes in the second half. The mood has never been darker.

“(Spurrier) tries to put some of (the blame) on himself but we know that we can get better,” Anderson said. “I feel the coach is getting the pressure for our team and I think it should be more on the players than on the coach.”

It was right around this week last year when it began to feel like old times again. The Gamecocks held Georgia to four field goals and won 16-12 at Sanford Stadium on Sept. 8 and afterward, Spurrier, in classic HBC form, said the result was not a “shock” and that, “It wasn’t like they were some big, powerful team.”

Revisiting those remarks this week, Spurrier said, “I probably said something that, it turned out, it wasn’t realistic. I said we were only four-point underdogs going over there, so winning the game should not have been a tremendous upset. That’s what I said.

“As the season progressed, they finished No. 2 in the nation and we were out of the Top 25. So their team got a lot stronger and better as the season progressed. And unfortunately, our team went the other way.”

As has that Spurrier mystique. Since the Gamecocks crested at No. 6 in midseason of 2007, they have lost five straight conference games. Now comes Georgia, ranked second nationally. In its long history, South Carolina has never beaten a No. 2, much less a No. 1.

“They know how big a game this is,” Spurrier said. “We got a lot of Georgia players on our team. They know what it is. Tennessee is a big game too. Florida is a big game. … Vanderbilt’s a big game.”

Surely, no one has waited four years to hear Steve Spurrier admit to that.